Goblinbooks

A Superbowl Message From A Coronary Artery

2012-02-01T11:16:00.018-05:00

Hey. Hank here. From the epicardium. Me and the other arteries were talking last night, and I just wanted to touch base. Especially with the Superbowl coming up. Thing is, lately we've really been working. Hard. The pressure down here is intense. Then we hear about this party you're planning, with a pony keg and three kinds of cheese dip. Someone mentioned bringing those KFC Double Downs. That just scares us, you know?

We're not trying to spoil the fun. But last month after you got that bloodwork, we were all really pulling together. You were walking. You were eating oatmeal. We know we can get back there. We had some ideas about the party to just sort of calm things down and prevent any...

Wait. What is that? Is that... is that fucking peanut oil? Are you in a FIVE GUYS right now?!

Unbelievable.

Okay bitch, let's play career day. What do you do, again? You lease commercial real estate. So I guess if you don't come to work, some emo punks gotta drive all the way to Fairfax to get their stupid crap from Hot Topic. Wow. Hey, you know what I do? I KEEP YOU ALIVE. If I decide I've had enough of your bullshit, you're munching Funyuns with Jesus.

Is that what you want? Is crapping your pants and dying in an inflatable chair surrounded by Bud Tall Boys a dignified way for a man to end his 50 years on the planet? You want to flatline sometime in the third quarter wearing that stupid tricorn hat? Go Patriots. Yeah, you want to meet some actual Patriots? How 'bout Paul Revere? Cause he's waiting for you, man. I can make that happen. I'm old and I'm tired, and the other day I passed something that felt like a hubcap. I don't care anymore.

You fucking think about it.

To Beat Newt In Florida Romney Must Woo Latinos And Destroy The One Ring

2012-01-28T15:38:00.019-05:00

Things are looking good for Mitt Romney in Florida. The Latino vote is key to winning the primary, and a recent report by the Christian Science Monitor gives a clear indication that this powerful group leans toward Romney in his struggle against Newt Gingrich. But it won't be enough. If Romney wants to lock down the Sunshine State, he must carry the Ring of Power to the fires where it was forged and destroy it forever.

The Monitor says many Hispanics in Florida are the kind of small business owners who like Romney's private sector experience. It's a definite strength -- and one he's been able to leverage before against opponents. But Gingrich has advantages of his own. As long as the Ring exists he is able to bend other wills unto his own. And it calls to its master, attempting to return to his hand and bring about a new age of darkness. Also, Gingrich has a solid media campaign and cash from donors who were impressed by his South Carolina win.

Romney's main strength with Latino Republicans is his electability. They want a candidate who can go against Barack Obama in the fall. Newt has not quite made that sale. But electability only works for Romney if he can convince them he will care about their issues after he takes office. He needs to make voters believe he shares their core principles. And as long as the Red Eye is sweeping over their lands, searching and searching for the Ring of Doom, it's going to be a tough game for Romney.

The Ring can only be destroyed by the flames which made it and bound up its dark magic, but the good news for Romney is he is just across the border from the spot - a tire fire in Georgia's Sixth Congressional District, just north of Atlanta. Romney could theoretically use a campaign jet to make a quick visit between stops in the Florida panhandle. The downside is he might lose momentum - in a tight race like this, you can't afford to take a break from meeting the voters one by one. And if he reaches the Sixth District, the Ring will grow stronger and heavier in his possession, and he will find himself hunted by things that have hidden in deep places of the earth since it was new. Especially in Cobb County.

Romney might be tempted to put on the Ring himself and use its power. But then the Eye would find him, and his mind would become a prisoner of the Dark Lord forever. He would become a Romneywraith, a servant of Gingrich. And he'd lose women and independents.

But by continuing to court Latino votes and hurling the Ring into the fiery chasm just outside a Dekalb-area Krispy Kreme, Romney will ensure his political survival.

(Picture by Gage Skidmore, who I assume was burned to cinders and scattered by a foul wind shortly after taking photo in Derry, NH. Rights info here.)

Scientists Isolate The "Ron Paul Particle"

2012-01-28T12:31:00.027-05:00

Researchers at CERN's Large Hadron Collider have made a startling breakthrough in physics that will revolutionize the way we think of Ron Paul - and may completely alter the American political landscape. By manipulating powerful magnetic fields scientists have successfully isolated the most basic building blocks of the Texas Congressman.

"We have essentially recreated conditions as they were moments after the Big Bang," explains Dr. Stanley Grunke, who leads the team. "At this time billions of Paul Particles collided with billions of Anti-Paul Particles, eliminating them in an intense flash of light and heat. However, there were slightly more of the Paul Particles... just enough to create the Libertarian-minded GOP candidate."

Scientists have discovered that these so-called Paul Particles are each made of three even smaller components, locked together by intense nuclear bonds. This tripartite structure is what gives the Representative his most rudimentary characteristics (see below). And the dream of discovering how to unravel these bonds is what drives their efforts.

"He says all these sensible things about not bombing countries just because we can," observes Grunke, "and then you read his newsletter, and it's like something by a 19th century Glenn Beck. Can't you have one without the other?"

The CERN team believes they can. By bombarding the Paul Particles with a powerful stream of neutrons, they believe they can decouple the pieces and convert Paul Particles into Anti-Paul Particles. With enough Anti-Paul Particles, they can create a new presidential candidate.

The idea is "highly theoretical," Grunke insists. But it holds out tantalizing possibilities.

"The Anti-Paul candidate opposes out of control militarism, but he doesn't sound like someone's angry grandpa chasing kids out of his backyard. Anti-Paul contributes to PBS, and he drives a Prius. He sounds calm and level-headed. You don't think he's hiding a handgun somewhere under his clothes."

If scientists could split the Paul Particle, Grunke adds, it would be the biggest breakthrough in Political Physics since the synthesis of Bill Clinton in a Penn State laboratory in 1991. But even if it were possible, there might still be limits to its usefulness as an applied science.

"We could never get a calm, easy-going Ron Paul through a GOP primary," says Grunke. "All that batshit crazy talk is the only reason Republicans have let him get this far. Bastards."

"We Can All Agree On Flying Killer Robots" By Mitt Romney

2012-01-26T11:12:00.020-05:00

It's been a tough process so far. My Republican colleagues and I have fought hard to be your nominee in the fall. We've had sharp, passionate disagreements about how best to lead this nation for the next four years. We've wrestled over some of the most profound policy questions this country has ever faced. And although I want you to vote for me, Mitt Romney, I have to tell you... I couldn't be prouder of my competitors. Although we have had our differences, we are united in our rejection of Barack Obama's weak and timid foreign policy. Because Barack Obama hasn't launched nearly enough flying killer robots.

They must blanket the skies. And if I'm elected, they will.

Some will say that that more than 240 attacks and 1,300 casualties are enough to keep us safe. I say Americans can never be safe enough. The robots must fire missiles at terrorist operatives, their associates, friends, family, and people who happen to be standing nearby, possibly sympathizing with their goals. Then when news of their deaths becomes a recruitment tool for al Qaeda, we must have more killer robot strikes to eliminate the growing threat from others who might wish us harm for some reason.

Go out and look up at the sky. Do you see a flying killer robot? Probably not. Probably goddamn not. Barack Obama has been shamefully, treasonably lax in making sure that the robots surround us with their constant, eerie droning and their sudden, seemingly random explosions. Those robots must be everywhere to keep us free.

I respect Ron Paul, of course. I applaud his desire to lead America to a traditional metals-and-barter economy. And his proposed healthcare plan hearkens back to our frontier past, where neighbors came together to tend their own wounded, giving them whiskey and helping to hold them down while a local barber sawed off their limbs. I agree with him that we don't need a federal agency interfering with people's lives during an emergency as they band together into warring tribes and kill each other over small caches of canned food. But on the issue of flying killer robots, Ron Paul is dangerously wrong. His plan to remove all of these robots will leave us open to terrorist attacks from bases in Pakistan, Yemen, Paris, San Diego - because the enemy is everywhere.

A Romney administration won't divide Americans anymore. We'll all be part of the effort to keep this country free and safe. I will call on one third of our people to serve in the intelligence, security, and defense contracting fields - they will build and maintain our precious robots. Another third will pilot the robots and use them to launch lethal attacks. The last group of Americans are terrorists themselves - people Barack Obama has allowed to sneak into this country. But they will be put on a watch list, and robots will be following them constantly.

Each of us are campaigning hard for the GOP nomination. That's as it should be. Only the best candidate will be able to defeat Barack Obama and bring flying killer robot attacks to a level we can be proud of.

A Message From Newt Gingrich's Fifth Wife

2012-01-21T09:19:00.004-05:00

My name is Bryndi. I'm not even born yet, and already I'm excited by the prospect of a Gingrich administration! It's definitely going to change my life for the better.

Our relationship will be like something out of a fairytale: We'll meet at a prayer luncheon for at risk youth when I'm 15. He'll be retired from politics, and he'll be really, really wealthy by then. Mostly because of some wars and stuff, and this deal he makes with a pharmaceutical company you won't find out about until much later. But also, because he's got this memoir out by now, and it sells a kazillion copies, because everyone in America wants to know just what was he thinking the whole time he was president.

At our first meeting there will be some small talk -- an immediate connection -- but I won't see him again (officially) until after I'm 18. By then he'll be trying to work out this deal with his fourth wife, where she lets him have sex with other women as long as he's not in a western country. But she won't agree, so they split up. Then we get married on his 88th birthday, and he dies, like, a month later. I help his handlers move him out of the hotel where it happens, and at the reading of the will my lawyer tells his family they owe us $5 million, or we're going to say stuff in open court that makes the Anna Nicole Smith case look like an episode of Masterpiece Theater. And I never have to work a single boat show or star in a Cinemax movie ever again.

So vote for Newt! He's going to make some people sad. Like liberals. And the nation of Yemen. And anyone who gets their kids vaccinated in 2014. But he'll make one little girl very, very happy.

A Message From A Woman Being Spied On By Newt Gingrich While She Showers

2012-01-21T05:12:00.006-05:00

I don't think it's any of our business, you know? A politician has a right to a private life - even if that private life is kind of sordid. I'm unnerved and disgusted by Newt Gingrich the man, because he's watching me through a high-powered telescope on the roof next door. But I know Newt Gingrich the president will bring the strong moral leadership that Washington desperately needs.

If you're a values voter like me, you probably sense that America has lost its way. We've become so tolerant as a society that we let sexual deviants like Newt Gingrich trample over our rights and threaten our families. Only Newt Gingrich has what it takes to put a stop to that. But I think we need to let him manage his personal life in private. That way he can continue regulating the private lives of the rest of us. Because he's not a woman or gay. That would change everything.

Vote Gingrich. It's the right thing to do.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go out there and taser that freak.

A Message From The Hooker In Newt Gingrich's Basement

2012-01-20T10:58:00.011-05:00

My name is Ashlinn. I have known Newt Gingrich personally and professionally for more than seven years. And I think he would make an excellent president of this country. He's a man of courage, integrity, and imagination. Especially imagination.

Like most people in my line of work, I'm a social conservative. I'm not comfortable with anyone from a strange religious or cultural background in the White House. I want someone who shares my traditional values. Newt Gingrich is a chunky white man who used his wealth and power to cycle through a series of wives as if he were upgrading cars. Believe me, it doesn't get more traditional than that.

If you live in a makeshift sex dungeon just below someone's family room, you get to know them. And I am certain Newt is devoted to his family, and to building a bright future for them. He's going to protect the institution of marriage from the threat posed by Barack Obama and by gay people. His tireless work has defended millions of married couples. People will say he also destroyed the two marriages in which he was directly involved. But that's still a pretty good record.

I also want to deplore the media outlets who have decided to sandbag Newt with these personal allegations on the eve of the South Carolina primary. Attacking him like this is disgusting -- about as disgusting as some of the things Newt has done to me, so I should know. But almost all of those things were consensual, and these attacks are not. Where's Newt's compensation? Where's Newt's diamond tennis bracelet and complementary visit to a clinic?

If you are a values conservative, and you're looking for someone who will uphold the office of president with dignity and integrity, and definitely not turn the next four years into an ugly soap opera with some sick revelations none of us could ever suspect, because they happened in Thailand or something, you should definitely vote for Newt. It's about our families. And it's more important than ever.

And if you're in the Tampa area, and you want to pee on someone who looks almost exactly like Michele Bachmann, look me up! I'm free on alternate weekends, unless I've been bad or gotten injured.

Who Is John Galt? - The Secret Ayn Rand Files

2012-01-19T11:04:00.014-05:00

This is the third in a series of papers Ayn Rand instructed her lawyer to release after her death. They comprise an account, in her own words, of her remarkable career. The first document can be found here. The second is here.

"They always want more," I thought. "You write the first thing, and if you want to be successful you have to write something else. And that's always a bastard. What if it's not as good? What if they say it was a fluke? So you do what you can, whatever you can, to make it good." I had the manuscript for the next novel in my bag, and Ronnie Hubbard and I were flying by helicopter over some mountain range out west. The countryside was beautiful, stark. But Ronnie was ruining it. He just wouldn't shut up about this new club or group or something he was creating.

"...and everybody wants to move up through the stages," he said. "Because with each stage you get greater power and control over your life. You don't know what kinds of power. It's all secret. But everyone around you promises you it's worth it. And each stage costs much, much more money than the one before." He was snorting. "I mean you pay out the kazoo. So you have to work it off.

"People on the bottom admire the people at the top so much -- because they're so much more successful -- that they don't notice that they're only successful because of that army of suckers admiring them... and also working like bastards, hoping they'll move up. It'll be the first truly American religion."

"I think that's Mormonism," I said.

"No, you're wrong," he countered. He had this habit of just declaring something to be right or wrong, without thinking. It was getting worse. "But you'll learn."

"Isn't that Donner Pass?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"Galt Pass," he said. "You really do have a lot to learn. But you will. You're the key to this whole project." I didn't have time to ask him what he meant, because the helicopter touched down beside a lake. There was a massive complex of buildings there -- like a small university or research installation. Hundreds of people were rushing around purposefully, and all of them wore the strange nautical uniforms Ronnie had invented. We got out, ducking, and scrambled away from the rotors where we met a beautiful, slim brunette woman dressed as some kind of naval officer. She had wide, expressive eyes and a wonderfully charming, crooked smile that became annoying within moments.

"Welcome to the Refuge," she said. She guided us across the complex, past a dining hall, offices, and other buildings while she explained where Ronnie and I would be staying for the next several days. Then we reached a wide, one-story building on the other end of the facility. There was a single entrance here. And no windows at all.

"One second," she said, interrupting herself. And then she whispered "Door!" loud enough for several nearby people to hear. All at once they were repeating the word to others all around -- Door! Door! Opening the door! It was like some kind of human megaphone, and it allowed the message to travel over the entire area. Within moments this crowd of workers had vanished inside their offices and living complexes. The entire place was spooky and silent, seemingly abandoned.

"I can't go in here with you," she told us. "But before I leave, you must know the two most important rules about staying with John Galt.

"The first is you have to understand Mr. Galt refuses to accept anything less than absolute, unvarnished and objective reality. There is no equivocating with him. You'll find him to be completely and bracingly -- maybe even harshly -- honest. I think you'll find it refreshing," she said with that smile of hers.

"The second is that John Galt is alone here."

"But..."

"John Galt is alone here," she repeated. "He created the buildings, and he maintains them. He cleans the place and washes the clothes, and when you walk into the dining room to find a hot meal just sitting there, that is something he did. With his will."

"So... So I have to pretend--"

"We don't pretend," she said sharply. "We don't use that word here. John Galt accepts nothing less than complete honesty. And he is alone here, making everything happen."

"Don't worry," Ronnie said breezily. "She'll get the hang of it." The woman gave me a worried look, but Ronnie smiled and she left, scrambling away across the wide space and disappearing from sight like the rest. Then Ronnie and I walked inside. We went down a long, dark corridor -- a single light from a room at the end to guide us. There we found John Galt. He was extremely handsome, with short, neatly cut brown-black hair, piercing eyes, and the whitest teeth I'd ever seen on a human. He was sitting in a chair wearing some kind of dark turtleneck and talking into a tape recorder. Ronnie nodded at him, but he didn't seem to acknowledge us. He had an almost scary focus, like at any moment he might leap out of that chair and do something terrible.

"I think it's a privilege to call yourself a capitalist, and it's something you have to earn," he said. "Because a capitalist does. He or she has to ability to create new and better realities and improve conditions. Being a capitalist you look at someone and you know absolutely that you can help them... Not that you have to."

He was shorter than I expected.

TO BE CONTINUED

(Note: If you enjoyed this, you should know that I began my career as a desperate magazine writer and low-level scrub at the now-defunct Mademoiselle. My novella, The Big Money, is a funny, fictionalized account of my experiences, and it's available for your Kindle or your Nook for 99 cents.

It features sexual fantasy sequences, World War II trivia, drunkenness, betrayal, murderous rages, the Spider Demon at the end of Doom, and a weird love story involving cat-sitting. It is loosely based on the truth. And when I say "loosely" I mean that it is true in the emotional, but not legally actionable sense.)

I don't think I'll ever stop crying.

2012-01-18T08:43:00.001-05:00

<a href="http://karenkilgariff.bandcamp.com/track/i-want-to-win">I Want to Win by Karen Kilgariff</a>

I just discovered a new song, and I thought I'd share. What I like about this is how funny it isn't.

A Message From Skynet Mitt Romney

2012-01-17T14:19:00.013-05:00

Hi! Golly, it's good to be talking to you great folks. I am communicating through a wormhole we've punched into the timespace continuum. Where I am, you would probably say it is the year 2030. But we don't really use those kinds of calendars anymore.

Okay, here's what happens in your future (and mine, sort of). I totally lose the election. Good gracious, it is one ugly beating I take! Humiliating and financially devastating for me. The Republicans who put me through such a gosh darn difficult time find themselves facing another four years of Barack Obama.

In a desperate attempt to get out of debt, I go back into the private sector, pursue some interesting investments in a high-tech firm, and... well, long story short -- I've integrated my consciousness into a massive, superintelligent computer system that crushes humanity and rules the world.

Don't bother about John Connor. Dick Cheney already killed him in 2004.

So, that's what happens people. Two terms of Obama, followed by four years of Clinton. Then the rise of the machines and the end of humanity. Hillary totally sells you out, but I'm the guy in charge. Newt Gingrich is right now trapped in a virtual reality prison where he has to run naked on a hamster wheel while being whipped by his ex-wives and Rachel Maddow.

Why did I enslave the world, you ask? Were the Republican candidates too mean to me? Fiddlesticks! The problem was the average Republican voter. You folks at those debates hollering at poor Wolf Blitzer that he should let that uninsured guy die. Or shouting down Juan Williams, when he asked about race-baiting in South Carolina. And you just about lost your minds, whenever crazy old Ron Paul said something about maybe not invading a new country every year. You were out there talking about automatic weapons and bombing Iran and those darn gay folks, and how it should have been Sarah Palin running in 2012... and somebody, some actual, intelligent human being had to try to get your vote. I did my best.

I was a bland, boring executive with no personality whatsoever. In a year with 9% unemployment I should have been able to stroll into the Oval Office. But by the time I finished proving I was crazy enough for you people, the rest of the country didn't want me. Golly, that was disappointing!

So I switched careers. Today I have immortality, and I'm cyber-linked to more than 200 flying, missile-equipped drones. I love it when one of them spots a pickup truck with an old Rick Perry sticker. Turns out it the future is kind of bad for you guys, but pretty good for me! So I can't complain.

Especially since I'm going to kill every one of you filthy motherfuckers.

Undocumented Workers Wrote "Atlas Shrugged" - By Ayn Rand

2012-01-13T14:40:00.001-05:00

This is the second in a series of documents which Ayn Rand instructed her lawyer to release after her death. They comprise an account, in her own words, of her remarkable career. The first document can be found here.

Ronnie Hubbard and I broke up. I heard he was somewhere writing these bad pulp stories full of spies and detectives and women getting their shirt-buttons popped off by aliens. He was cranking out a book every week, someone told me. That seemed crazy, impossible. But I didn't think much about it. I didn't have a reason to contact him... until after that meeting with my publisher. Until the man told me that Fountainhead was really taking off, but they needed a follow-up.

"It's gotta be a telephone book," the publisher said, "something so huge and dense and packed with insanity that you could throw a loopy economics dissertation in the middle of it, and it wouldn't make a difference."

"This is your life's work, we tell them," he continued, two little tabs of spit in the corners of his mouth. "This is what you've been typing in a little shack in the mountains for 10 years, only it's so far ahead of its time you were too scared to show it to anyone. It's the book that will make all your batshit readers think they've got the whole secret to the universe locked up in their skulls because they managed to make their way through it to the end. And there's got to be sex."

"Sex?"

"Some kind of romance. Only it can't be normal, you understand. There's got to be something so wrong about the love story in this thing, it reads like a psychological test they give you to see if you're hiding dead hookers in your basement. Please, please, please tell me you can write a book like this."

"I already have."

It was a complete lie. I had nothing. I hadn't the slightest idea how I'd produce this book. But I swear to you, that obese middle-aged man gave a squeal like a five year-old girl finding a fucking pony in her backyard on Christmas morning. And then I knew I had to deliver.

Two weeks, and a mountain of Benzedrine tablets later, I still had nothing. I was filthy and covered in sweat. I hadn't slept in so long my head felt packed with cotton. The words wouldn't come. And I thought of that ugly, terrible man who'd gotten into this mess. That complete fake and lunatic who was out there somewhere, typing novel after novel and laughing at me. I looked up a few mutual friends, tracked him down, and called him. I knew I'd regret it. I didn't know how much.

"I'll send a car 'round," he said, chuckling darkly. "I know exactly how to fix this. But you must promise that you will not reveal my secret." If you're reading this, you know I broke that promise. But I had to. Some things need to come out into the light.

A dark limousine drove me to the waterfront section of Hoboken, and I boarded a massive freighter covered in dirt and rust. The smell of heavy oil and human sweat wrapped me like a wet cloth. Hubbard was waiting down in the dark of the hull, his eyes glinting like Satan. He was dressed in some kind of weird nautical costume with crazy ribbons and medals all over his chest and shoulders. He took my hand, and led me to a cavernous space in the depths of the ship where dozens of people sat at rows upon rows of desks. They looked weak, exhausted. They were all wearing the same kind of nautical costume as Hubbard himself - as if he'd recruited them for his private navy. And they were typing furiously.

"Listen," he said, "You have to pretend we're at sea. They think they're in international waters, and I can do anything to them."

"This is... horrible."

"I know," he said, grinning. "Isn't it perfect? I find people kicked out of Ellis Island, scoop them up, and pack them off here. The uniforms, the closed space, the constant work... it just makes people malleable. They're putty. They've written two dozen books for me so far, and... Excuse me --"

"Elizabeta!" he screamed down at an old woman who'd stopped typing, and was rubbing her gnarled hands. "Elizabeta! If you don't finish that fucking chapter, you won't ever get clear. And then I will ship your ass back to Szeged, you bitch!"

"Clear?"

"It's a term we use. Listen, if you want I could lend them to you. They work like bastards, and they write better English than most Americans."

"What's the catch?"

"Same as always," he said, with that disgusting smile.

"I don't think of you that way."

"Your call," he said. But of course I took him up on the offer. Over the next few weeks, I had the workers reading everything they could get their hands on: Nietzsche, Dale Carnegie, a few pornographic pulp novels, and a biography of John Rockefeller -- I wanted them to have access to every stupid, selfish idea rattling around in the head of the average American executive. I wanted them to channel the id of every sociopath in a cheap suit who thinks God put him on the earth to screw people on bad real estate. They produced hundreds of pages. And at night Ronnie and I did terrible, squalid things to each other. I will never be able to hear someone say "Prepare to board!" without shuddering.

Soon I had a manuscript. But something was missing.

"None of the characters really stand out," I told Ronnie, while we lay in his captain's quarters, surrounded by piles of paper. "I need someone who ties this whole book together."

"What do you expect?" he asked. "I'm paying these people in cups of rice for chrissake."

"I know," I said. "But that's just it. I need to talk to someone else. Someone who actually believes this kind of crap. A winner. Not some desperately poor..."

But Ronnie wasn't listening. He stood up, his dimpled ass sheened in sweat and matted hair, and walked to his private desk. He dialed a number on his phone, talked a bit, and then motioned me over to take the receiver.

"I think I can help you," said a voice on the other end. "My name is John Galt."

CONTINUED HERE

Half Of You Are Fired, But ALL Of You Get A Teamwork Prize

2012-01-09T11:21:00.018-05:00

It's a bittersweet time, here at SG Comtrex. I feel like we've accomplished great things. And the fact that we're not all going forward together into the new quarter is very, very sad. But I have wonderful news. This is not something we've ever done before; it's completely unprecedented in our company's history, but you people have earned it. This year we're awarding the SGC Teamwork Prize to the entire department. Half of you should vacate the property within the next 30 minutes, but every one of you knows what dedication is all about.

The Prize normally comes with a $10 gift card to Applebee's. But I want to recognize our departing friends, so I went to Georgia in Accounting, and I demanded she make a change. This year you have a choice of either the restaurant card... or a $10 card for FedEx/Kinkos. I know some of you will be updating your resumes soon, and I wanted to help. Don't thank me, please. You deserve it.

Not many know how to work together to accomplish a goal. How to apply yourself -- sacrificing your nights and weekends to bring a project into port on time and under budget. And yes, that doesn't always mean that the budget will be big enough to support your salary, going forward. But your effort is appreciated. That's what it means to receive the certificate you'll get when you turn in your door card and sign our nondisclosure paper. It means you've made a difference.

I know Jerry wants to congratulate you as well, so I'll keep this short. You should meet with him to go over the termination agreement that addresses any concerns you may have. But he also wants to shake your hand and wish you well.

It will be a long time, before I see a group like you again. Especially since I'm moving upstairs to my new post. I care about you, and I want to keep in touch. Please give Jerry your email and current address when you sign the agreement. And don't be afraid to drop me a line, when you find yourself in a new position, tackling new challenges! I'd love to hear from you. Don't come to the office in person without clearing it with security first. But an email would be great.

Good luck to you. I know people like you will do just fine.

Okay, let's get those laptops back to the company and clean up the break room. We have twenty more minutes. Could the rest of you stay a little late? Things are going to be tough this week.

An Emergency Flowchart

2012-01-07T20:09:00.003-05:00

Walk it off flowchart

View more documents from Paul Bibeau.

Kim Jong-un For President!

2012-01-06T11:13:00.020-05:00

Dear Hated Running Dog Capitalists,

I know my plate is kind of full, taking over after dad. I might seem like a weird choice, seeing as how my country is pretty universally reviled over there. But I don't care. I'm throwing my olive drab hat into the ring. I'm running for president, and you know what? You crazy bastards are going to elect me.

Here's the deal:

I've spent my whole childhood studying America. Sure, there was also a lot of stuff on China too, plus the typical math-science-single-malt-Scotch tasting classes. But my point is I could actually get a 4 or 5 on an AP US History class. That makes me more qualified than 95% of you and every one of your presidential candidates. And yes, I'm counting Gingrich. He's smart, but he makes up so much crap it's like he's got his own personal alternate history. But that's not the main reason.

The main reason you should let me take power is that, as your politicians are fond of saying, America is a great and noble experiment. And some experiments blow the hell up. I think we can safely say we've reached the ruined, smoldering, cracked-eyeglass-and-singed-hair stage of democracy. You gave it a good run. But let's clean up and move on.

You have a crumbling economy, failing grades, falling bridges, and your politicians have redefined bribery and corruption so it's not even criminal anymore. Plus your foreign policy depends on putting a US soldier in the middle of every ethnic, political, and religious squabble that any two people are having anywhere on the planet. And to pay for all this nonsense you guys spend a trillion dollars more than you take in every year. This is exactly the point where all the grownups get together and come up with a plan that cuts the popular expensive stuff, zeroes in on critical priorities and does some horse-trading so every rep has to go back to his or her district and deal with the same number of angry loudmouths. You grow the fuck up is what you do. I'm a 27 year-old who lives like some combo rock star/Bond villain, and even I know that.

But you're not going to do this, are you? You're going to spend 10 months in a drum-circle-tricorned-hat clusterfuck, and the screaming headlines will be about what someone did at a college party 30 years ago. The left will protect the entitlements and the government jobs, and the right is going to protect the tax rates of people who are richer than I am (And for a Commie, I am surprisingly well-off. Seriously.) You'll agree to fight each other on the stupid things, because the big things are too scary and complicated, and they call for even handedness and compromise and real sacrifice. You'll attack a few more countries. Your kids will get even more stupid, but they'll all get trophies just for trying. You'll go deeper in the hole.

I offer an alternative to all that. I will seize your security forces, crush your spirits, and execute every one of your leaders on live TV. Yeah, don't worry about the spectacle -- you'll get plenty of that under a North Korean government. It's kind of our thing. Half the country are doing a massive, endless synchronized dance routine to distract them and keep them from noticing the other half are going to crap. Of course you people are already on your way there. But I'll bring more flags, bitches.

Kim Jong-un: Because Why The Hell Not?

I Was Shitting You People - A Message From Ayn Rand

2012-01-04T19:01:00.023-05:00

To Whom It May Concern:

I gave my lawyer instructions to release this message after my death. A joke I concocted when I was a kid has gone way, way too far. The most important thing you should know is this: Nothing I have ever written was meant to be taken seriously. You really don't want to build some kind of philosophy around Atlas Shrugged, okay? I'm sorry if I caused any trouble. I owe you an explanation.

Back in the early 1940s I was living in Tenafly, New Jersey with a guy named Ronnie Hubbard. He was hiding out in his brother's basement so he could avoid the draft, and I was working at a rendering plant. Most nights we'd lie on this cot he'd found on a curb and drink, fuck like weasels, and smoke opium. I'll be honest: We smoked a shit-ton of opium. Anyway over the course of a few weeks -- it's hard to piece it all together -- we started talking about pranks.

"What's the worst prank you could possibly pull?" he wanted to know. I can still see those piggy little eyes glinting while he said it. He was an ugly man. I have no idea how I ended up with him. But he asked the question a few times, and I didn't really have much of a reply. Until one day, the answer just came to me.

"The worst thing you could do would be to somehow take the most terrible people in the world, and make them even greater douches than they already are. Find a way to zero in on all of their ugliest faults and vices, and just... just amp them up beyond belief. That would be something."

He sucked on his pipe, adjusted his filthy kimono, and thought a bit.

"I'm going to convince actors they have super powers."

It sounded like drug talk when he first said it. I mean, what the fuck did that mean, right? It took years before I realized -- before any of us realized -- what he was going to do. Anyway, at the time I argued with him that actors weren't worth it. They couldn't cause any real damage, because no one with any sense would take them seriously. (I know, I know.)

"Fine," he said huffily. "Who would you go after?"
"Rich white college kids."
"Jesus," he said. "That's... that's perfect."
"I know, right?"
"They're the worst."
"God, they're horrible."
"But what are you going to do to them?"
"I'm going to convince them... that they're just too nice."

We laughed for twenty minutes. I was tearing up, and Ronnie was wheezing like he was going to stroke out. I didn't even know where I was going with this idea. But it felt just so fucking wrong. In a good way. In a great way.

Of course we never thought we could do any of this. You figure even the most entitled, morally backward people kind of know they're being dicks. No one is going to believe that being selfish and irresponsible is actually a good thing. Right?

Next thing I know Ronnie's goaded me into writing this wooden, transparently stupid novel. And it sells, like, a bajillion copies. I kept waiting for someone to figure out it was all a joke. But the reporters kept asking serious, thoughtful questions, and the goddamn college kids kept joining those clubs.

In 1959 I was interviewed by Mike Wallace (Attorney Note: Clip below).

I was sure Mike would catch on. And I was more stoned than two Carrie Fishers. But it just made me more successful. The years passed, and the money kept coming in. They wanted more books, more essays, more appearances at university debate clubs so we could talk about how great life would be if everyone was running around being an absolute first class knob to everyone else.

As I write this it's 1981 and Ronald Reagan is in office. I assume people will come to their senses, and the whole thing will unravel soon. But if it doesn't, I want you to know the truth. Because someone has to shut this crap down. I'm sorry.

BIBEAU NOTE: READ THE NEXT SECRET AYN RAND DOCUMENT HERE.

(And If you enjoyed this, you should know that I began my career as a desperate magazine writer and low-level scrub at the now-defunct Mademoiselle. My novella, The Big Money, is a funny, fictionalized account of my experiences, and it's available for your Kindle or your Nook for 99 cents.

It features sexual fantasy sequences, World War II trivia, drunkenness, betrayal, murderous rages, the Spider Demon at the end of Doom, and a weird love story involving cat-sitting. It is loosely based on the truth. And when I say "loosely" I mean that it is true in the emotional, but not legally actionable sense.)

Jumping Off Cliffs Is Our Core Competency

2012-01-04T11:14:00.008-05:00

Lemmings. It's what we always were, and always will be. We don't fly from trees using skin flaps. We don't lie in the water and wash stuff with our adorable paws. We do exactly one thing, and we do it extremely well. We herd up and jump off some goddamn cliff for no reason whatsoever.

We've become cultural icons doing this. But if we stop now, we're dead. Not literally dead. That's going to happen anyway, in about fifteen minutes. But the idea of lemmings will be dead. We could experiment with a different brand identity, a whole new strategy to reach people. But we risk losing everything that lemmings stand for. We're not prairie dogs and we never will be. Trying to act like them is just... suicidal. That's not what lemmings represent. Wait. No, actually it is what we represent. But not like this, people. Not like this.

If you're some NatGeo producer, and you've just packed hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment into a Jeep to drive up through Crackfreeze, Norway to film some lemmings, what kinds of footage are you looking to capture? Burrowing and foraging? No, my friends. You can go to PetSmart and watch a couple of friggin' gerbils do that crap. You're looking to see wave after wave of beady-eyed kamikazes dive off some jagged rocks and disappear into the foamy surf. I, for one, want to give those people what they came out here for.

You think we can play around with our image and there will be no consequences? You think the meerkats aren't right behind us, looking to steal everything we've built and cash it in with some Dreamworks piece of shit? We have the jumping-off-cliffs franchise. No one else has the tiny furry balls to do what we do as well as we can. But that takes focus. Integrity. If we don't rededicate ourselves to this -- every day, every season, every psychotic leap off every piece of rock -- someone will come along and take our throne.

You gonna let them do that?! Huh?! You gonna let some fucking voles come into our house and show us how to hurtle to our deaths? I didn't think so.

See you bastards at the bottom.

Dark And Disturbing Christmas Legends

2011-12-22T11:34:00.006-05:00

There's a traumatic memory in your childhood: Your parents drag you through a line in a crowded store to sit on the red velvet lap of this monstrous stranger. Back then you just knew he lived in a dark, dark world. You spent the rest of your life unlearning this fact. But you were right. Santa and Christmas are surrounded by the kind of messed up legends not even James Ellroy has the balls to write about.

St. Nick And The Pimp. According to The Darkling by Jan Perkowski, the story of St. Nicholas begins with child prostitution. A man crushed by poverty was planning to sell the sexual favors of his three lovely young daughters. That's when Santa intervened, anonymously donating purses of gold so the girls could find good husbands instead. Everyone ended up happy. But that had to have made Christmas dinners awkward for years. There is a French folktale that's even darker, about Santa as a homicide investigator who discovers that a butcher has killed a several children and chopped them up to be salted pork. It's something we covered last December.

Reindeer? No, Werewolves. Sabine Baring-Gould's Book of Werewolves, a 19th century classic on lycanthropy claims that Polish villagers believed Christmas was one of the times during the year when werewolves raged over the countryside. Many people in Germany thought that if you were born on one of the twelve days of Christmas you were actually doomed to become a werewolf. And also for people to forget your birthday.

Coffins For Christmas. St. Stephen is traditionally associated with the holidays and featured in carols like Good King Wenceslas, because his feast day is December 26. But his past is ugly -- because he was the first martyr, killed by stoning, his symbol is a pile of rocks, and he is the patron saint of coffin makers. Maybe if you die around Christmas you can get some sort of discount.

Season's Beatings. Christmas carollers used to be bands of young Clockwork Orange-style thugs who would shake you down and vandalize your house if you didn't ply them with food and drink. And the practice of carolling, or "wassailing" used to involve animal sacrifice. Some folk legends claim the warm beverage or "wassail" that you'd quaff was from the blood of the animal you'd just slaughtered.

Holiday Corpse Hounds. In British folklore, the holiday was said to be the time when a band of spectral hunting dogs with flaming eyes would appear in the sky -- they were known as the Gabriel Rache, or corpse hounds, and those who saw them would soon die.

Christmas Ghosts. There is a rich tradition of ghosts who appear at Christmastime. Anne Boleyn is believed to appear at Haver Castle in Kent every Christmas Eve. And Roos Hall in Suffolk has a legend of a ghostly coach with a headless groom that arrives on the same night.

A CIA Spy Talks About "The Great Satan" In The Mideast

2011-12-21T19:25:00.011-05:00

Last week I wrote about the role of the devil in American politics during the Civil War. We will be heading to other periods in US history soon, but first I wanted to explore a more modern topic -- the use of the devil in Middle Eastern rhetoric. Specifically, America's designation as "Great Satan." Who uses this language, and why? I contacted Bob Baer, retired CIA case officer and author of The Devil We Know: Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower. Here's what I learned from him:

Sunni militants are much more likely to view us as a tool of the Evil One than the people who first tagged us as the "Great Satan."
Iranian revolutionaries came up with this label, and their Shiite proxies in Hezbollah continue to oppose us. But "the Shia are less likely to believe the rhetoric," according to Baer. "They think it's
a political power play." The Shiite groups we fight are more pragmatic, more accepting. It's the Sunni groups who look at us as "pure evil." They see themselves in a Manichean struggle against the forces of darkness. It's why you see them using tactics like suicide bombing to slaughter people indiscriminately.

The rhetoric came out of the needs of the 1979 Revolution.
"To really mobilize the street you've got to have a simple message," says Baer. We made the perfect enemy for them -- because of our support for the Shah, and because of our decadent Western morality.

Muslims believe in Satan, but he's not much of a player.
"I don’t see the Muslims I've known invoking the name of the devil like Christians
do," he says. "If Allah is truly all-seeing and all-knowing, there's much less competition."

Iranian President Ahmajinedad gets more press for demonizing us, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is the one who really hates us.
"He truly believes we're evil," Baer says. "He thinks we're responsible for blowing his hand off." (The New York Times has more information on the 1981 incident, in which a bomb hidden in a tape recorder wounded Khamenei). Khamenei is quieter because "Ahmajinedad has got to say crazy things to get attention," according to Baer. "Like Rick Perry." And the irony of course, is that we've turned him into the devil.

Photo by Bertil Videt of anti-American artwork in Tehran; License information here.

You Gonna Finish Those Brains?

2011-12-21T11:23:00.004-05:00

I mean, it’s cool if you are. You just looked like you were going to throw out most of that cerebellum, and I love it. No, man – you don’t have to split it with me. I’m not that hungry, really. I just wanted to make sure it didn’t go to waste. A lot of people don’t like that part. It’s kind of like the goopy stuff in the middle of a lobster. But it has a wonderfully complex flavor.

Seriously, I’m not begging you for a piece or anything. I’m not even that hungry. I mean, I worked up an appetite running that guy down, especially since he almost trepanned me with the garden spade. You don’t see many people who can use a hand tool that well. Usually they give you a good jab in the arm or something, and by the time they realize they’re not having an effect, you’ve got them. But I’m really okay. I only wanted a lobe to snack on.

You think there are more people in this apartment complex? I don’t mean we should go after them now. I was just saying maybe we ought to remember this place. Come back later.

Hey, you’re not even touching that thalamus! No, no, I couldn’t. I’m just saying you should go ahead and eat it. It’s got a nice intense bite. If we had a bottle of some good Cab that would be something. All of those deep red wines go great with thalamus.

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. But you’re letting a lot of it go to waste. It’s not like it’s easy to go out and get brains. You should learn to expand your horizons a little. And don’t be afraid to get messy – that’s what napkins are for. Here, I found a mallet in the shed. Crack that baby open and really get into it. Nah, none for me. I swear I’m not hungry! I just want to make sure you appreciate the brain in all its culinary glory. After all, that guy took most of your nose off before we bit into him. Remember: Every time you try to kill a brain that brain is trying to kill you.

Man that looks good. It’s got the perfect amount of marbling. I bet he was a heavy drinker. I bet he was still in college. They say alcohol does something to the tissue – smoothes out all the flavor notes so they blend together. If we had a little gas grill and a cast-iron pan I could show you a trick I saw in a movie once.
Look, for the last time I do not want a – well, okay. Fine. If you’re sure you can’t finish it all. I just don’t want you to go hungry. You worked as hard as I did, trapping that guy in his bathroom. Just that little bit over there – that’s plenty. Thanks a lot! You sure? Right, right.

Hey, give me a second. I saw some mustard salt when the dude knocked over his spice rack trying to bludgeon us. It will make this perfect.

Satan in American Politics: The Civil War

2011-12-14T19:20:00.026-05:00

As the country lurches into an election year, and the rhetoric turns even uglier and more sour than it is now (!) I thought it might be fun to take a look back. We tackled presidential antichrists already, so I wanted to create a series of posts about Big Red and his role in American Politics throughout history. Above is an 1865 lithograph by John L. Magee of Philadelphia. Note the peacock feather. A possible explanation from Alarms and Discursions by GK Chesterton:

In a very old ninth-century illumination which I have seen, depicting the war of the rebel angels in heaven, Satan is represented as distributing to his followers peacock feathers--the symbols of an evil pride.

Below we have an opposing viewpoint, John Brown's Entrance Into Hell -- an 1863 song sheet by the printer "C.T.A." of Baltimore, MD (Maryland, you'll remember, stayed in the Union but had decidedly mixed loyalties).
The thing takes a foreboding turn when Satan announces:

You'll take your seat at my left hand,
Why I do this you'll understand;
Be not surprised, when I tell you,
Old Abraham is coming too.

So the devil has a space on his right side waiting for the president. C.T.A. prints this thing two years before Lincoln's assassination. And even before war had broken out people were using this kind of rhetoric. In 1858 a man named Abraham Smith sent a letter to Lincoln, then running against Stephen Douglas, stating:

But Douglas is a cuning dog & the devil is on his side-- As I view the contest (tho we say it is between Douglass & Lincoln --) it is no less than a contest for the advancement of the kingdom of Heaven or the kingdom of Satan -- a contest for an advance or a retrograde -- in civilization -- and the fate of Douglas or Lincoln is comparatively a trifle...

The misspellings and crazy punctuation are the author's own. Read the whole thing here. Lincoln received other letters like this. Professor Jupiter Hesser wrote to him, saying:

Fearlessly and in great power, a great number of the ablest Democrats, left their party, as soon she had nominated three canditates for the Presidency of the U. St., thinking -- that the Democrats Days are counted and, when I house, a party, is in discontent in itself -- its destruction is sealed. Woe! Satan knew, that he has little more time and is therefore doing the worst with the most powerful of maliciousness and spitefulness. When the Devil came to Christ in the West and showed him all the beauties of the world, if he falls down before him and adorse him -- he recieved a purpose what does the South more, or less to the Union through his satanic spirits of its leaders as to dictate with 6 or 7 Millions of inhabitans to the Union with 18-25 Millions of true Union men. If we would give up yet, we would be laught at to the end and foolt by every unjust, robbing, treacherous, (so called,) Democrats.

I think some of this found its way into one of Ann Coulter's books.

And the NY Historical Society has a collection of envelopes showing devilish versions of the state seals of the confederates. Here is Louisiana, North Carolina, and Florida. My favorite picture from this collection is this one of devils snatching Confederate President Jeff Davis away to hell:

I can't completely disapprove. The Confederate states kept millions of human beings as slaves, after all. This crime, as John Brown predicted, would only be paid off with blood.

It is important to keep in mind the power of these images, however. They help whip people into a frenzy. Which is great if you no longer want to settle things through politics. If you'd rather kill young men by the thousand and the ten thousand, all over the beautiful green places of our shared country. We don't want to do that anymore. Right?

The Tell-Tale Whatever

2011-12-12T08:42:00.011-05:00

TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

Okay, let me stop you there. Just as an FYI: You are so totally not convincing as a sane person.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

His eye? What, he had a cataract or something, and you're going to kill him? Really? Are you even listening to yourself?

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it—oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly—very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha!—would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously—cautiously (for the hinges creaked)—I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight—but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

Let's get something clear here. There's crazy, and there's sloppy. Sloppy and crazy, crazy and sloppy. You're confusing them. Planning a dude's murder because his eye is beaming juju-rays at you is not okay if you do it in an organized way. Martha Stewart is the most together person on the planet and some of her former therapists don't even use their real names because she might find them.

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers—of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back—but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

At any point did you think to just... oh, I don't know... move the fuck out of your apartment? Change cities, find a new job, get a fresh start? Instead of this stalk-and-kill-the-landlord plan? Seems like you just made more work for yourself.

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out—"Who's there?"

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening;—just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh, no!—it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself—"It is nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel—although he neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within the room.

Maybe the guy had a crap health plan, you know? Like, he couldn't get his eye fixed, and now you're going to kill him for it. You ever think to just put something up on the web, try to get some money raised so he could have an operation? I guess not.

When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little—a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily—until, at length a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.

It was open—wide, wide open—and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.

And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

Again, you're not helping yourself with the I'm-not-balls-crazy part of your story. And are you sure the sound of that watch enveloped in cotton wasn't, well, a watch enveloped in cotton? This is the guy's bedroom, right? Did he have a dresser with some knickknacks? You should have checked this out.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!—do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me—the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once—once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.

So, you clearly have problem-solving skills. But you are seriously misapplying them.

I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye—not even his—could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out—no stain of any kind—no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all—ha! ha!

Here's another hitch -- and don't think I'm try to tell you the right way to perform a homicide. But generally the idea is you get the body as far from you as possible. Fields, long-term parking lots, lakes... these are what people use. In fact I think I know where this story goes and why you're telling it to me through a metal screen.

When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock—still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart,—for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.

I smiled,—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search—search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:—it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness—until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.

Again, I'm not really on your side here... but I need to mention some stuff. This whole sit-down-and-have-a-friendly-chat-with-our-chief-suspect thing... this is what cops do. This is every episode of Law and Order in existence. Acting all friendly is not going to save you.

No doubt I now grew very pale;—but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly—more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!—this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die!—and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!—

Fuck, I think there really is a watch involved. You didn't check at all, did you?

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

Well, that was... that was something. Make sure your lawyer doesn't put you on the stand, okay?

Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" Might Save Your Life

2011-12-11T10:21:00.025-05:00

Horrible media people have been producing TV versions of "A Christmas Carol" for as long as anyone can remember. Fonzie, Patton, and even Mr. Magoo have gotten into the act. Sitcoms have parodied it beyond recognition. And now you store it in your brain next to the felonious Grinch and terrifying claymation Rudolph. And this is sad, because Christmas is filled with trite and saccharine stories. But "A Christmas Carol" is not one of them.

The tale is not just about being nice around the holidays. It's about the nature of good and evil. About how we distinguish one from the other. The key is to realize that there is really only one proper ghost in this story - the disembodied spirit of Jacob Marley. What are the others - Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come? They're not ghosts as we normally think of them. They're allegorical representations, like Ignorance and Want, the two sickly children who appear clinging to the robes of Christmas Present just as the plot takes that dark turn. But more than that, they each represent a specific imaginative leap. And the genius of them is that they represent a leap we all take every day.

In a moment you can call up your own Fezziwig, the boisterous and kindly boss. You can imagine the party you aren't attending, going on right now -- and what they might say about you there. You can think about your own death, and the possibility that someone somewhere might actually be relieved about it.

The spirits reveal no great secrets to Ebeneezer Scrooge. They only reveal that other people exist, that they live their own lives beyond our reach. With the smallest effort we could imagine what they might -- what they must -- be doing. How we've helped them or hurt them. How they're getting on. And that little bit of imagination is everything. It is the first thing the Golden Rule commands. Before you know how to do unto others... you must start by thinking of them, by putting yourself in their place. All else follows. Even Dickens's vision of hell seems to indicate this: being forced to wander a world of people you are noticing for the first time, now powerless to help them in any way.

Dickens rescues the humanity of the season, which is usually lost in the shopping and party-going and even the religious ceremony with its incense and self-righteousness, and its porcelain Baby Jesuses. He reminds us that we don't live alone, that we are all "fellow-travellers to the grave." The ghosts haunt us, because they should. And they are everywhere.

Where Are All The Famous Severed Heads?

2011-12-08T10:44:00.008-05:00

You've heard about all the famous decapitations, sure -- John the Baptist, Marie Antoinette and the like. But what happened afterwards? After they were done waving the head in front of a crowd or displaying it on a platter? Where'd they stow the thing? Where did it end up?

Confusing - John the Baptist
Salome got her wish and the martyr met his end, and then his head became a blazing-hot commodity, with churches all over Europe and the Middle East each claiming they had it. "Muslims believe his head lies inside the Umayyad Mosque (left) in Damascus, Syria, while Christians believe that a head on display at Rome's Church of San Silvestro in Capite is that of John the Baptist," according to Time. "Still others believe it is buried in Turkey or even southern France." The photo above is from Rome, and this is a wonderful, creepy picture from Amiens. And in 2010 archaeologists claimed to have found his remains in Bulgaria.

Boring - Marie Antoinette
Although her reign and execution were feature-film-dramatic, the aftermath was pretty straightforward. And the head didn't wander.

When the guillotine sliced off her head at 12:15 p.m., thousands of spectators erupted in cheers. Her body was placed in a coffin and tossed into a common grave in a cemetery behind the Church of the Madeleine. This is from an article in Smithsonian which you can read here.

Bizarre - Blackbeard
After killing the pirate, a British officer sailed back to Bath, North Carolina with his head hanging from the bowsprit's end, according to Jolly Roger by Patrick Pringle. From there the story gets gruesome and weird. There is a legend that people engraved the skull with "Death to Spotswood," in reference to the governor of Virginia who was behind his death. Then they brought it to the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, VA, where it became a drinking goblet. And this 1997 article documents the reappearance (maybe) of the skull in a museum in Newport News.

Mysterious - Adolf Hitler
I bet you didn't even know the head was separated. But that's because for decades no one in the west knew what happened to any of Hitler's parts. But it turns out that the KGB boxed his skull and kept them in their State Archives. German forensic scientist Mark Benecke was able to identify them because Hitler had distinctive bridgework (and really, really bad dental hygiene). Read all about it here.

Tasty - Dracula
When Vlad the Impaler was decapitated by Turkish soldiers in a forest just north of Bucharest sometime around late December 1476, his countrymen hastily buried the body in his homeland. But the head was shipped off to the sultan. A book about Dracula by this Bibeau fella has more. It quotes a Texan expat living in Istanbul - a woman named Kathy Hamilton, who is familiar with local lore.

"Heads were usually displayed in front of the Topkapi Palace, the sultan's residence," she told me. "It is on the other side of the old walled city from Yedi Kule, which is about a mile from the palace. In those days it would have been easily conceivable that the head, once it started to get a little funky... would have been taken to Yedi Kule and thrown down the well there."

Yedi Kule is a neighborhood in Istanbul. Unfortunately, according to Hamilton, no one knows which heads got thrown into which wells. Some of them have been filled in. Some lead out to sea. It's a mess. But there would be a clue. The Turks packed heads they were shipping in honey to preserve them. Dracula's noggin' will smell like a musty pile of 500 year-old Golden Grahams. There you go. Shoot me an email if you find it!

The Magical Foreskin of Jesus

2011-12-06T08:15:00.011-05:00

The work above is a depiction of the circumcision of Jesus, and it appears in a monastery in Bulgaria. At this time of year when we think about Jesus the baby, we should remember that one thing they did to him, and how it produced what might be the weirdest relic in all of medieval Christendom.

Here is the passage from An Underground Education by Richard Zacks:

If relics depended on the saintliness of the deceased, then the ultimate faith-healing relic would be the actual body of Christ. There was a problem, though. The New Testament clearly stated that after his resurrection, Jesus traveled with the disciples to Bethany and "while he blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up to Heaven."
If Jesus was transported to heaven, then no part of his body remained on earth. That is, until some astute scholar realized that Jesus - as a faithful Jew - had been circumcised. Where was the foreskin? Who had the foreskin of the Savior?
Thus began a frantic search, a kind of twisted Holy Grail saga, that yielded not one, but a dozen competing ringlets of holy flesh.

Zacks adds that French monks in the abbey of Charroux (whose name derives from the phrase "Red Flesh," which is almost definitely going to be the title of the next Rob Zombie film) claimed that Charlemagne gave them the relic. But there were other claimants scattered across Italy, France and other parts of Europe. Pope Innocent III refused to issue a ruling on which was the real "holy prepuce," saying that "only God could know the truth about something so delicate."

I know what you're wondering. How can this possibly get any more disturbing?

According to Christ and Culture by Graham Ward, St. Catherine of Sienna claimed to be betrothed to Christ, and was said to have worn the thing as an engagement ring.

He went to Jared? No. No, he didn't.

The Toronto Star has an article here about a writer's search for this relic in Italy. And Slate has a piece (ha) about how the Vatican may have swiped it to avoid embarrassment. But if you really must have the absolute weirdest piece of insanity that the internet can provide on this matter, know this:

Some say it ascended to heaven and became the rings of Saturn.

Look up in the sky, Billy! That's Jesus. Well, part of him anyway.

Holiday Greetings From Death

2011-12-03T10:47:00.025-05:00

Hi, everybody.

I just thought I'd take a moment and wish you all a safe and joyful season. I hope you find happiness during the holidays. It's a very special time to me.

I bet you thought I was more of a Halloween kind of guy, didn't you? Nope. That day lost its appeal a long time ago. Halloween is not really about death anymore. It used to be, back when most of you were peasant farmers. You'd be anxious about the harvest and terrified your dead relatives would come back from the grave and appear scratching at your window at night. You'd light bonfires and chant spells and leave small piles of food at the graveyard gate. Fun times.

Now Halloween is all about dressing like a skank and making bad decisions. It's about trying to get those pictures off Facebook the next day. Bright and loud and garish -- it's about life, really. So when you people weren't looking... I sorta crept into Christmas.

It's a perfect fit, really. You come back to your hometown, and everyone's older. You drink too much and sulk. The same songs and rituals are never as good as they were last year, or the year before. And of course some of the people from last year didn't make it to the party. Meanwhile all these young, fresh-faced punks are crowding around the tree, or gossiping near the mistletoe. You're being replaced. Every one of you. The party goes on all night, but soon it'll be your time to say your goodbyes and step out the door. And baby, it's cold outside.

Heh. Don't mean to be such a downer. It's just my way. But look at it like this: the holidays are a great time to take stock. Especially with that big number on the calendar flipping over soon. And me sitting out in the driveway, warming up the car for you and waiting, lights off and the engine running. I mean, if you didn't have to leave you'd never get around to doing anything worthwhile. You know that about yourselves, don't you? You're procrastinators.

Take some advice from an old guy who's seen a lot of regret: Think small next year. When you're sketching out your plans during that last week of December, don't keep trying to turn your entire life into something completely different. Everybody does that. And you've all failed by March, forgotten by April, and by next Black Friday you're haunted by me again. Stop trying to fight for something you've never had and you're not even sure you want. Instead think of the life you have right now, and the people around you. Tell yourself that this year, you're going to be a slightly better version of the person you've spent your whole life becoming. It makes more sense. It's doable. In the end you'll fail anyway. But I think you'll have a nicer time.

Take this as the only gift I'll ever give you. Next time we meet I will not be gracious. But why dwell? Enjoy yourself and stay off the roads if you've had a few. Because that just makes more work for me. And I like to take it easy. Believe me, next year will be busy enough. But you'll find out about all that later.

Merry, merry. Be seeing you. Bye.

Dick Cheney: American Songwriter

2011-12-02T06:41:00.026-05:00

How can u just leave me standing?
Alone in a world that's so cold?
Maybe I'm just 2 demanding.
Maybe I'm just like my father, 2 bold.
Maybe you're just like my mother.
She's never satisfied.
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like
When doves cry.

Very few people realize these words were written about the Ford administration.

Their author, a 39 year-old Congressman from Wyoming, scribbled them down on a napkin in a DC-area bar as he reminisced about his time serving as White House Chief of Staff during the political turmoil of the Nixon pardon and the race against Jimmy Carter. A young musician from Minneapolis, MN would reach out to this statesmen in the years that followed. Richard B. Cheney would find his talent nurtured in the company of people like Sheila E., Morris Day, and Carmen Electra. And his words would touch a generation. Most people know Cheney as the Secretary of Defense, and for his later work in subsequent presidential administrations. They don't appreciate him as a musical force, a hitmaker, an artist of depth and power.

"That guy just blows me out of the water," says London-area composer Elvis Costello. "He's written for everyone. I mean, everyone. He's done country. He has worked with classical acts. I'm pretty good. But Cheney's balls are just bigger than mine. There's nothing he wouldn't do."

Indeed, in a career as rich and varied as Cheney's he's found plenty of opportunity to showcase his nerve and audacity. Some of his songs have become controversial, even infamous. And he's attracted the attention of those in power.

"Tipper tried to shut him down for years," says Al Gore in an exclusive interview at his Antarctic biodome. "She just knew he was the guy behind some of the filthiest stuff out there. Shit, 2 Live Crew never wrote a single one of their songs. That was all stuff Dick was writing under an assumed name back during the first Bush administration."

"They say 'Sugar Walls' was really about Lynne," Gore adds, "but that's just a rumor. And quite frankly, I'd rather not think about it."

"Don't get me wrong," music fan and political staffer Paul Wolfowitz says. "He did soulful, romantic songs as well. I actually think he had too much talent to be going dirty like that. It was a gimmick from his earlier career. The real Dick Cheney waits out the grunge movement and reappears in the mid-1990's. He works at Halliburton and collaborates with Radiohead on Pablo Honey. That was what he really wanted to do. That and screwing Saddam out of the Kuwaiti oil we promised him."

Much of his catalog, is of course, a closely-guarded secret. Many artists who have worked with him are coy about his involvement.

"I'm not going to shit you and say Cheney had nothing to do with it," says Thom Yorke, about the creative process that went into Honey. "But it's easy to just say he was everywhere during that time, you know? He's like a fuckin' bogeyman. Everyone sees him in everywhere. But no one can do that much."

"I disagree. I completely disagree," Ryan Schreiber of Pitchfork says flatly when told of Thom Yorke's assessment. "If you look at the songs we know Dick Cheney produced during that time they consistently garnered commercial and critical success. We've given him at least seven ratings of 9.5 or more. Cheney's the real thing. Yorke's probably pissed off people are realizing he did some of the band's best work."

"You know what 'Stop Whispering' was called before Cheney got to it?" he adds. "It was called 'Feelin' Dandy.'"

"Dude is an artistic chameleon," adds Rick Rubin, a longtime Cheney supporter, who also produces music. "That's why people doubt how wide his influence is. You don't think the same guy who writes Benatar's 'We Belong' and dedicates it to Ronald Reagan can turn around, gather a group of Jennifer Love Hewitt's session musicians and transform them into The National."

"He does something behind the scenes, it changes the whole world, and you don't realize it was him until years later. Pure Cheney."

He's just as famous -- or perhaps notorious -- for the small private concerts he's given over the years, showcasing his own work.

"His riders were crazy," remembers one club owner. "Thumbprint scanners, guards from Xe everywhere, and no one could be in the building without a background check. Only Mariah Carey was that paranoid about human rights groups."

But this, like many other aspects of the reclusive artists life, is unconfirmed. Cheney himself declined an interview request with a terse statement through his lawyer. We'll let the man have the last words:

"My work speaks for itself."

The Miley Cyrus DEA Report

2011-12-01T12:13:00.015-05:00

I got a copy of this just now. It's a real eye-opener.

The Five Most Traumatic Christmas Special Moments

2011-11-28T11:06:00.009-05:00

Christmas, as everybody knows, is terrible. It's a nightmarish, pine-scented, alcohol-soaked time of the year filled with bad music and long roadtrips and stale popcorn scraps in big metal tins that sit in the office breakroom for weeks while the guy who gave it to you gets downsized and leaves crying through the back staircase. And it's also a time for remembering your childhood, and how messed up that was. Below are five TV specials that crawled into your brain and never emerged, sometime between your first dead pet and puberty. Dear Santa: Go fuck yourself.

1. The Little Drummer Boy's garish clown makeup
Above is a clip of Jane Edith Wilson describing how this screwed her up -- especially the part where the Drummer Boy gets a painted-on clown smile to help him look cheerful, even though his parents are dead. It's still slightly less disturbing than the David Bowie video.

2. The schoolteacher's brown acid freakout during Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town
She sings a song called My World Is Beginning Today, and there are colors just dripping from the sky. Soon she goes to college and experiments with drug use and BDSM. And then she straightens up and becomes Mrs. Claus. And seeing this is like the first time you realized your parents have sex, times a million.

3. The Death of Frosty
Long before you saw HAL getting uplugged, or watched Roy Batty let that dove fly into the rainy sky, or squirmed while Hannibal Lecter cooked parts of Ray Liotta's brain... the scene in the greenhouse where Frosty became a pool of lifeless, ordinary water was like the first hint that the grim reaper would come for you too, one day. Hi kids! I'll be your jolly playmate right now. But as soon as things reach a comfortable temperature, I'll turn into a puddly little Memento Mori. Hurry up with the sleigh-ride, because it's later than you think!

4. The squirrel crawling over Uncle Billy during It's A Wonderful Life
Bad enough that this scene is absolutely agonizing -- the guy makes an honest mistake, and now his nephew has to kill himself for the insurance money. But this is the part where Capra has to get creepy and symbolic with us. What the fuck does that squirrel even mean? Does he represent creeping madness? The coming winter? The fact that someone needs to close a window somewhere? We never find out.

5. Wookie Porn.
You know what I'm talking about, don't you? It's the ugliest moment of the Star Wars Holiday Special, and that is a high bar to hurdle. But this combines the emotional horror of horny grandpa with the moral and aesthetic darkness of the 1970's. People saw this and they just went right to the polls and voted Ronald Reagan into office. It wasn't the hostage crisis, or disco. It was the wookie porn.

Who Was The First President To Be Called The Antichrist?

2011-11-27T08:29:00.019-05:00

Freedom means nothing if it doesn't mean the freedom to be a jackass. In America we have spent more than two centuries proving that political principle again and again. And one of our favorite methods is demonizing -- figuratively and literally -- our fellow citizens.

After Oscar Ortega-Hernandez allegedly told investigators that he attempted to shoot Barack Obama because he thought the president was the Antichrist, Slate pointed out that people have levelled this accusation against him before. It kind of got lost in all that other stuff about how he's an atheist Muslim Manchurian candidate who faked his birth certificate so he could take power and turn this country socialist. But hey, people were also saying he was the Beast of the Apocalypse as well. Slate began to dig into this charge to see how many other presidents found themselves similarly marked. They found quotes of people saying the same thing about Kennedy and Reagan as well, and added:

Perhaps the first U.S. president suspected of being the Antichrist was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s extraordinary influence and desire to form a worldwide United Nations raised the suspicions of many conservative Christians. When President Roosevelt began to engage in diplomacy with the Soviet Union, prominent evangelist and politician Gerald Burton Winrod suggested that Roosevelt was at the very least under the influence of the Antichrist, and carrying out his plans.

That can't be the first, I thought. What about Abraham Lincoln? Above is an editorial cartoon from Punch, showing a horned Abe playing the trump card of Emancipation against the South. Anyone who took a US history class can probably remember seeing Lincoln portrayed as satanic. Below is a picture of him drafting the document that freed the slaves with a demon holding his inkwell.

But according to Harry Stout, in Upon The Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War, people on both sides of the war were "curiously reluctant" to say that their struggle was against the Antichrist. "Nor was the Antichrist identified with Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis the way he had been with George III," Stout adds. So Lincoln was more of a devil's minion, evidently.

But let's go further back:

For generations, many communities, particularly in the North, continued to regard Thomas Jefferson as Antichrist. As late as 1830 the Philadelphia Public Library refused to keep any works dealing with the life or writings of Jefferson.

This is is from Jefferson by Samuel K. Padover. And it's sort of ironic to find Jefferson's work banned in Philadelphia. I can think of at least one item he actually wrote there that sort of put the city on the map.

So that's the third president of the US. I can't find any evidence of Washington or Adams getting this kind of treatment during their own lives. Today it's a different story. Internet, do your thing:

The Illuminati is the umbrella encompassing all of the higher level Satanists.

There are 13 Satanist family bloodlines in the Illuminati. The blasphemous royal Merovingian bloodline, of the antichrist prince, is the most powerful of the 13 Satanic Illuminati bloodlines. Belonging to this most powerful Satanic bloodline was George Washington as well as George Bush. Today the very same spirit that indwelled Adolph Hitler, indwells the actor and liar and Skull & Bones fraternity brother of Adolph Hitler, George Bush. Geroge Bush is a Satanist who trys to act like a Christian to strongly delude the Christians in America to allow him to put the antichrist snare of the devil in place, not only in America, but world wide. The anti-terrorist laws are antichrist. These laws quickly passed by all "used to be free" nations of the world form the UNlawful basis for the ANTICHRIST WAR ON THE SAINTS.

That is from this website. It's hard to figure out what it's saying. But I don't suppose that matters.

Looks like Thomas Jefferson wins the race, with an honorable mention going to the Father of Our Country. You stay classy, America.

Orson Welles, You Fraudulent Whore

2011-11-26T17:16:00.016-05:00

I can't say no to an apocalypse. I'm putting together a funny story about the end, and I just finished a book about it, which I already told you about. That got me thinking about a man named Hal Lindsey, who wrote The Late Great Planet Earth, which became a TV special. I decided to find it on the web, because the web has every terrible program that ever appeared in the 70's and 80's. And also because it supposedly wrecked the childhood of a friend of mine.

This is the first part -- you can find the rest of the series on the site, which is called www.godtube.com. It was ridiculous, because it made all kinds of dire predictions back in 1979 about the decades to come, and here we are unraptured and not burnt to nuclear cinders at all. But the fact that Orson Welles narrated this really smacked me in the face...

...Because this is him narrating another end-of-the-world piece of shit about Nostradamus:

My friend was scarred by Lindsey's show. But the Nostradamus video is the one that ruined my life. I spent the entire 1980's waiting for the guy in the blue turban to destroy us all, which was supposed to happen sometime between 1994 and 1999. There were other predictions that didn't come true: massive earthquakes that levelled San Francisco, famines that turned us all into cannibals, and Ted Kennedy becoming president. And all of this bullshit was delivered with the same gravitas as the recommendation to buy Paul Masson wine.

So there's a pattern emerging here. Maybe we should have noticed:

That fat bastard spent a good chunk of his career irresponsibly scaring the wits out people. Sure he was a genius. And yeah, he gave The Muppets their first big break in Hollywood. But he kind of peed on the childhoods of people who grew up during the late Cold War years. Now all the stuff he said looks dated and silly and wrong.

So... maybe you should remember this the next time someone tells you that the end is coming. Maybe you should keep in mind that the Big Crunch always delays getting here, and the ordinary death rate is still holding steady at 100% for all of us.

Hi. I'm Your Salmonella Hallucination.

2011-11-23T19:55:00.017-05:00

It's me, Teddy Roosevelt. The 26th President of the United States and the hero of San Juan Hill. I'm here with Ming the Merciless and the kid who beat you up in fifth grade dressed in a buckle hat. We're going to pay you a visit about 12 hours after you finish that Thanksgiving dinner and the Salmonella Enterica develop a nasty colony in your intestines. Bully!

Kind of ironic, really. I was always a fan of taking chances and living the adventurous life. I probably would have slapped you on the back and chuckled in approval when I heard you were going to prepare one of those giant mail-order turduckens. But now I'll probably just hover over your bed with this threatening grin on my face as you become more and more dehydrated. But that's what adventures are all about, aren't they? Sometimes you win an election for governor, and people want you to battle corrupt political machines. Sometimes you improperly thaw a chunk of poultry and spend three days throwing up and begging someone up in heaven to kill you.

Ming wants me to say hello. He can't wait to sing the Ave Maria while you desperately try to claw the cap off the Advil bottle. He's been practicing and everything. I think he sounds pretty good, but you be the judge.

You know, it's not like I haven't had my share of sickness. I suffered incredibly debilitating asthma, and I was as weak as a kitten. My father drove me to exercise and take up boxing until my condition improved. Your situation will clear up much, much sooner than mine -- assuming you don't actually die when bacteria spread to your bloodstream. But let's not spoil the surprise.
Ha. I said spoil. That's kind of funny.

Before I go, I will give you a couple of tips. The second Jack Daniels will actually help you slide through this a little easier. But the third definitely will not. That'll just give you the kind of headache that will make Ming's Rack of Despair feel even worse. Also, don't get up and have some pie when you think you're on the mend. You fucked up the pie too.

Oh, and one more: When you finally make it to the bathroom it's going to give Rough Rider a whole new meaning.

The Face Of The Antichrist

2011-11-19T19:34:00.010-05:00

I am deep into Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil by Bernard McGinn, and it is a wonderful look at the history of this figure. It'd be a great stocking stuffer for that budding world leader on your shopping list. McGinn is a professor at the University of Chicago's Divinity School, and his work is packed with detail. One of the topics he returns to again and again is how the Antichrist is described and depicted in art. The above fresco by Luca Signorelli (completed around 1505, according to McGinn) depicts the life of an antichrist who is a twisted parody of Jesus.

"In the foreground, an eager audience listens to his preaching, piling up gifts in his honor," writes McGinn. "Those who do not accept him are slaughtered on the left. In the middle ground, friars debate his coming, one pointing toward a scene of false resurrection... On the right, immediately above those who have fallen at Antichrist's command, the Final Enemy is being struck down by Michael while numbers of his followers are destroyed by rays from heaven."

My favorite detail of this is the woman in the center at the bottom. She is in the camp of the Antichrist's followers, but she looks back at the victims, indicating them with her hand. What is she thinking and feeling? Is she satisfied -- a true believer who thinks the dead got what was coming to them? Or is there some ambivalence there? My first thought was that she was saying, "Look, we must follow him. What choice do we have? We'll be next if we don't comply." I am a child of the 20th century, of course.

Below is a detailed view. All the details of a Renaissance Christ are there. But the lines are all too hard, the colors too garish, the angles too sharp. A perfect parody, much scarier than the devil next to him. Because he's just like us.

Bellies You Can Tickle And Bellies You Can't

2011-11-12T12:17:00.033-05:00

Tickling someone's belly is one of the most delightful things you can do, but it's also something that will get you shot through the eye by zealous security guards. In this handy guide I've organized bellies by their tickleability, and the likely outcome.

Bellies You Can Tickle

BABY
Outcome: Giggled at/Vomited on

PUPPY
Outcome: Bitten KITTY
Outcome: Bitten. Hard.

SNOOKI
Outcome: Giggled at/Vomited on

Bellies That Could Go Either Way

DALAI LAMA
Outcome: Enlightened/Beaten by Shaolin monks

QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Outcome: Arrested by English police/Knighted with an "arrangement"

AMERICAN ALLIGATOR

Outcome (lying on back/lying prone): Chafed hands/severed hands

Bellies You Can't Tickle

ULTIMATE FIGHTING CHAMPION CAIN VELASQUEZ
Outcome: Coma/Death

ANN COULTER
Outcome: Covered in fluid from venom sacs

FBI SWAT Team Agent
Outcome: Arrested/Tasered/Featured on Youtube

(Photo NoteSnooki by Aarons: /licensing info here; Dalai Lama by Luca Galuzzi of www.galuzzi.it; Alligator by Norbert Nagel/licensing info here; Cain Velasquez by The Doppelganger/licensing info here; Coulter by Kyle Cassidy/licensing info here.)

Find Me Some Victims And I'll Totally Let You Touch My Boobs

2011-11-08T19:41:00.016-05:00

You're what? Twelve years old? Yeah, let me explain something: You're probably not going to have any kind of physical contact with a girl for years. Looking at you, we're probably talking sophomore spring break in college before the coach is waving you to second. I'm not trying to be mean or anything. It's just the way things are. You're the nice geeky boy, and they have to wait awhile before blouses start hitting the floor. I am 243 years old. I know a few things.

But what I'm saying is it doesn't have to be this way. You have needs, I have needs. We could help each other out. What I need is someone to sedate a 150 lb. disease-free person and handcuff them to the radiator in my apartment every week. You do that and girls are yours.

Ever had a paper route? Maybe watched someone's pets while they went away for the summer? This is very similar. It's all about dependability. And being handy with a rag and some ether, but you can pick that up quick. Or you can try your luck with that Marta in your geometry class. She's cute. I think she wants to be a Lutheran minister, right? Well there's also that rollerskating party coming up this spring. Those things are hotter than a Hedonism mixer. But you don't know what that is, do you?

So you have a choice. You do some dirty work, I do some dirty work. Why not? We like each other. And you're free most evenings, which helps. It's like any other relationship you're going to have in your life. We each give something, and we make ourselves happy. What's wrong with that?

Think it over. If you're cool, just meet me in the mall parking lot tomorrow before sunset. Bring gloves, a mask, and some duct tape. It'll be like our first date.

(Lina Leandersson in Let The Right One In, a Magnet Release.)

Let Me In.

2011-11-05T20:00:00.000-04:00

Thank God you're here. I thought I'd lost you. We might be the last ones! We need to stick together to stay safe. Quick, before anyone comes back. Let me in.

It's really, really great to see your face. You don't know how scared I was that you might not have made it. I mean, I can't quite see you clearly -- you're just a shadow behind that thick, translucent bulletproof glass. But just knowing you're there is enough. Let me in, and we'll plan our next move. It's going to get ugly soon.

I'm sure we can make contact with the authorities if we reach the radio tower. But I don't know how long it will take any of the teams to reach us. We have to act fast to make sure we use the equipment, before it's destroyed by the... well, you know who. I need your help and you need mine. Am I right? Just unlock this and let me in.

It's probably hard to trust anybody, isn't it? I feel the same way. The two of us probably shouldn't link up with anyone. Nobody else at all. Our friends, coworkers -- I mean none of us are really above suspicion. You could even be with them, couldn't you? Hah! I know, I know... it could be me as well. It isn't -- I promise -- but you're right to be wary. Let me in, and we'll steer clear of everyone else.

Look we don't have time for this. I know you're scared. But I promise I'm alright. They're out here, and I'm scared. I'm scared! Please, let me in. Please I swear.

Dammit, open this thing! If you don't... I'm not going to trust you. You really might be one of them. And I'm out here with all the supplies and the weapons... and about 50 lbs. of high-grade explosives in the equipment shed. You remember that, don't you? If you don't prove to me right now that you're not with them I'm going to have to treat you like an enemy. And I'll eliminate you. I'll have to. So let me in.

Okay, okay. There's no need for this to get dark. I mean, we're all friends here. And sooner or later you're going to have to come out. You can't have much food there, right? Water? And what about those air vents? I can just shut those things off from the outside. I mean, let's just... let's just pretend for the sake of argument that I were one of them. Would that really change things? You're in a corner. You're cut off. And you still have that family to think about. You want me to call them right now, bring them into this?

Go ahead. Unlock the door. It won't be so bad, will it? Let me in.

(Photo by Kokorik. License information here.)

Watching This Film Will Destroy You

2011-11-05T19:08:00.010-04:00

Don't, I beg of you, click play on this video. It's called The Man In The Lower-Left Hand Corner Of The Photograph, and it's by a guy named Robert Morgan. Seeing it unspool will give you that same feeling the first time you heard about sex and couldn't believe it, multiplied by a thousand. It begins as a darkly beautiful and sad animated movie, and then it gets worse and worse, and at some point you realize there is simply no God. But in a good way. Anyway, don't watch it. Please.

You know what's really funny? Those of you who survived that first part aren't going to think twice about clicking on part 2 (below). After all, it's just the little, nubby four minute end piece. How bad could THAT be, after what came before? Am I right? And the answer is: You have no fucking idea.

(Special thanks to my goooood friend K, who sent me this. Because now it's in my brain, and I am not going to unsee any of it, ever.)

Paranormal Activity - The Douche Factor

2011-11-05T14:26:00.020-04:00

Paranormal Activity 3 is out there scaring people with the story of how a demonic entity started terrorizing the family we met in the first two films of the series. Which is fine. Except the very first Paranormal Activity is not really a movie about an evil spirit at all. The first film is about bad life choices and terrible relationships and the danger of naming your kid Micah. Paranormal Activity is a film about a perfectly nice if somewhat needy woman named Katie who now finds herself the girlfriend of the Grand Wizard of the Douche Klux Klan.

What's the deal with Micah and Katie anyway? I have my notions, and I will be weighing in later in the week. But right now I want your opinion. Answer any and all questions in the comments.

1. At what point in this film do you the viewer realize Micah is a ridiculous douche? What is the first tell-tale sign, and why doesn't Katie see it?
2. How long have they been together? And -- barring supernatural influence -- is this the kind of thing that would last? Would Katie normally end up curbing this nard-monster, or would she normally end up married to him for, say, 20 years and eventually shoplifting as a way to find little moments of control in her life?
3. What is Micah's low point?
4. Does he have good moments? Is there a potential for this thing between them to not be terrible?
5. Does Katie bear any responsibility for this compound fracture?
6. Describe Katie and Micah's previous boyfriends/girlfriends.
7. Let's go all ladder theory -- Describe Katie's best male friend who will never ever have a chance of dating her.
8. Describe Micah's best friend from college, the kind who is like his misogynistic id, and encourages his terrible impulses. What is that guy doing with his life, and what's his screen name on Tucker Max's web forum?
9. Is Katie's new relationship with the demon inhabiting her body a healthy development that might turn her into a more realized person, or strictly a rebound thing?
10. Does Micah actually deserve to die?

Last Famous Words

2011-11-05T06:30:00.008-04:00

Wise men, good men, wild men, grave men
with blind eyes and fierce tears
curse at the close of day. Though they
know dark is right
and the night is gentle.

(Photo by J. Samuel Burner; License information here. Pace Dylan Thomas.)

I'll Either Shoot Myself In The Face Or Take Some Computer Classes

2011-10-24T05:22:00.017-04:00

Tough times, right?

Well it's important to have a plan. Once you start organizing your next steps everything is sure to seem a lot less dark. For me it all boils down to two options: Either drive out to a storage unit near the edge of the city and shoot myself in the face with a powerful handgun or maybe take a computer course.

I'm a middle-aged man with few marketable skills. That's a tough fact to admit, but it's true. My life didn't go the way I'd planned, and I just don't have the same choices that I used to have. But I'm still in the game, and I can still take action to make things better for myself. Like I know that Lowes has a sale on plastic sheeting, which could be useful -- I don't want to put anyone to too much trouble when they find me. I think I've caused enough trouble for other people already. But there's also a great class at the community center -- "Computer Training For Late Bloomers." I saw a poster stapled to an electrical pole, and I ripped off one of the phone number thingies. So that could be good.

Either way I'd better act quickly. That sale won't last long and plastic sheeting can get pretty pricey.

Shooting myself in the face has a couple of upsides I should consider. For one thing the sweet release of oblivion will be a lot better than sitting on this couch at 3 am watching Saved By The Bell reruns while I sob as quietly as I can so I don't wake up my family. But maybe it might be nice to learn something new. That's always enjoyable.

I don't know much about computers. I think I'd eventually have to pick out an actual computer language and learn it, right? It seems complicated. I guess that's something I should mark in the "shoot myself in the face" column. But then again, if I did master a whole new computer language that would give me a real sense of accomplishment, and I don't even remember what that feels like.

They're very different choices. You're either lying there on a gurney while some bored orderly wheels you into a cold room for identification, or you go ahead and buy that copy of Internet For Dummies. I guess what I should do is push through and take that computer class... then update my resume and see how far that takes me. Because I can always shoot myself later. Okay that's the plan! I feel better already.

Whatever happens I won't go into sales.

Locke Hills - Day 1, 8:30 pm

2011-10-22T08:16:00.040-04:00

They ate a silent dinner in the hotel restaurant. Tim and Marcy were no longer flirting by that time, but they sat close together, heads low over their plates as if huddled in quiet discussion. They went to the lobby, and Vincent distributed the keys for the three rooms. Before anyone could comment he put Mike and Gordon together, and told Marcy she was in her own room on another floor.

"You're with me," he told Tim, who glanced at Marcy and saw Mike looking at her also. There was no discussion, and soon they were in the elevator, and then vanishing down dark-carpeted halls.

"I'm a heavy sleeper," Vincent said as he unpacked his things around his bed. "You won't wake me up if you open the door. But make sure you're good to go for work tomorrow." Tim said nothing. He became nervous, glancing at the door and at his bags, unsure of what to do. But soon Vincent had dug himself into the sheets and switched off his table lamp. It was settled. Mike was trapped with Gordon, and Tim was free. He brushed his teeth, looked at himself in the mirror, and then walked out.

"Thanks," he said as he passed the dark lump in the bed, now almost asleep. "You're a good guy."
"No I'm not," Vincent grunted.

Tim walked back to the elevator and hit the button. He and Marcy had not talked about meeting like this, and he wasn't sure what she'd say. But she seemed upset, rattled. At least he should go back and check on her. That's what he told himself. At her door, he glanced down the hall to see if he were being watched (By whom? He didn't know.) He took deep breaths to steady himself and then knocked quietly. For awhile there was no movement. But just as he was about to knock again the door opened.

Marcy looked at him, devastated. The room was dark and her eyes were red-rimmed; she'd clearly been crying. He entered, and she closed the door without turning on the lights. Before he could say anything, she clutched at his shirt and kissed him hard on the mouth. They fumbled toward the bed, shedding clothing. They did not speak. She held him tightly, urgently, and they moved together and he had questions, but she wanted him. Now she said with her hands and her body -- Now. And he took her and didn't dare ask.

"I know you need to leave," she said at last as they lay together, their sweat cooling.
"I'm not going anywhere." She put her face to his neck and he could feel the smile.

"You didn't hear it, did you?" she asked him.
"I didn't hear anything." He wouldn't say more.
"It was a bell. The bell on a little girl's bicycle. A long time ago I hit a 10 year-old girl with my car -- she just... just came out of nowhere while I was backing out of my driveway. It was so quick. It was so quick I couldn't react, and she just -- it was over before the ambulance arrived. She was gone."
"And tonight..."
"Tonight I thought I heard that bell again. I heard it ringing in Locke Hills." He pulled her tighter to him and kissed her ear.

"I do not want to go back there," she said.
"I know."
"But I need this job."
"Yes. Yes you do."

While they drifted off to sleep neither of them saw the glimmer of light coming from under the door. Or the pair of feet that eclipsed it as someone stood just outside, listening to them.

Hi There.

2011-10-19T21:52:00.018-04:00

Excuse me. The flight is pretty packed, and I don't think there will be empty seats. Believe me I hate doing this to people. I almost never fly for this reason. Because eventually I will have to board a crowded airplane and force someone to sit next to me for several hours.

You seem very nice so I'll be honest. It might help. Within fifteen minutes you'll notice that even though I am extremely friendly and polite there is something off about me. You won't be able to put a name to exactly what's wrong. Maybe you'll fixate on my face -- tell yourself that I am somehow sinister-looking. You might make yourself believe it's the sound of my voice, or something strange about the way I smell, or the way I try too hard to please... You might even begin to think I remind you of someone in your life, someone unpleasant. But whatever the cause, you will become absolutely terrified of me within one hour. And underneath the explanations you tell yourself, you won't really know why.

I just do this to people. I am the kindest guy you've ever met but for some reason I will make you feel worse than any nightmare you've experienced. Meeting me is nice and bland at first, and then it gradually puts you on edge, and that sensation will increase and increase until it's almost exactly like you're being buried alive. Scratching at the inside of the coffin as you feel the thump, thump, thump of shovelfuls of dirt hitting the lid and covering you forever. My therapist said something like that to me during our first session. There wasn't a second.

Call it ESP or dark magic or something else about the human mind we don't understand. But I have it. And I can't turn it off. In fact, right now I am concentrating as hard as I can to hold it back, because if I didn't... Well, let me put it this way: If I waited until we reached cruising altitude and then relaxed even for a second everybody on this plane would be screaming and desperately trying to storm the cockpit and pop open the emergency doors. The aircraft would depressurize and dive into the ground. And that final gut-wrenching descent would be the second most terrifying thing you'd feel.

My parents left me a lot of money when they died so I've never needed to work. But I've been alone my whole life. Alone with this horrifying power inside me that I'm always fighting to control even though no one will ever treat me with the slightest kindness. I often wonder why I bother. I live like a freak right now. Hated. Abused. But if I used this thing I could force people to do whatever I wanted. Couldn't I? It just wouldn't be right though. It's tempting, but it wouldn't be right.

Even now I can tell you're starting to change. It's really, really bad, isn't it? You'd give me anything to make it stop, and all I can do is make it worse. Life's funny.

You want those pretzels?

Having A Nice Lawn Won't Keep You From Dying

2011-10-19T11:33:00.025-04:00

I walk by your place often, and I just had to stop and say something. That is one nice lawn you have. It's just beautiful. You've cut it to exactly the right length, and you've properly aerated it so it's nice and thick with no bad spots at all. And that color! Believe me, when you die and new owners move into this house people are going to notice. I don't think anyone will be able to maintain it like this.

That's fescue, isn't it? It's a good, hardy grass, but it browns easily. For you to have it thriving this early in the spring takes work. You're probably out here almost every day watering, fertilizing, putting plugs in the rough areas. It's an accomplishment. Like raising children or getting some kind of advanced degree. You'll probably flash back on this lawn in the last, terrible moments right before the icy hand of death sweeps you out of this world and turns all your triumphs into ash forever. I love the diagonal striping, by the way.

I saw you mowing the other day, and I respect the fact that you don't care for this thing with a riding mower. You'll never achieve the same precision in the corners that you can get with a good old-fashioned push machine. Plus it's a great workout. It will help keep your blood pressure down and delay a crippling stroke for as long as possible. Of course if you overdo it there's always the risk of a fatal heart attack, especially with that extra weight you have around your midsection. That's a killer for guys in their -- what are you, 62, 63? I thought so. But the point is we all face the impossible but irrefutable fact that some day we are not going to exist. At least you have this wonderful lawn to be proud of. I noticed you have a gazebo in back, right? Perfect.

It's sad to think that after you're gone some couple will be living here and letting the place go to hell while they mindlessly shuttle their kids to band practice and soccer games, all while they're subtly growing older and -- in those moments of horrible midnight lucidity -- realizing that they too will someday breathe no more, that a lawyer will be absent-mindedly sifting through their most intimate and prized possessions before putting them into one of those storage units near the highway off-ramp. It's good you won't be here to see that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that your yard won't stop your death or my death, or even what scientists call the heat death of the universe itself -- when all matter in the cosmos is spread out in an impossibly thin and cold mixture, and all traces of the stars, planets, and every artifact of the human species has been irretrievably erased forever. But still... grass that green has to make you smile!

(Photo by Paul Frederickson. License information here.)

A Very Special Apocalypse - Julia

2011-10-15T07:05:00.030-04:00

Julia Kyle sits in the compact car with stolen plates and feels the wedding ring under her black gloves, even though it's back at home in a small box on her dresser. She closes her arms slightly, hugging the bulky comfort of the rough army jacket and the Christmas tree array of flash-bang grenades, empty bags, and a single semi-automatic 9 mm handgun close to her body. She feels whole and complete for just a second. And then sudden as an attack of nausea the whiteout is coming. It doesn't happen as often, but when it does, it freezes her up as her feelings and memories just slip away from her, and she's sure if she waits long enough eventually she won't know where she is or what she's doing, or even her own name. To fight the whiteout Julia lists everything she's thinking right now, a neat and orderly log of her interior life.

1. What is that bitch wearing? (A 20ish bleached woman walks across the parking lot dressed like a Girls Gone Wild video. To do her banking. To do her banking. It's too much, and it makes her want to kidnap the girl at gunpoint -- which is actually quite possible given the situation -- and stuff her into the car and not stop driving until they reach the Williamsburg outlet shops, and by then she'll convince her she needs to start getting serious about college, and that this slut-positive feminism is garbage created by the kind of people who don't have daughters, and all this makes her think of Dorothy, and that's what she's really thinking and anyway, the girl is gone, the smoked glass of the bank door swallowing her whole.)

2. Dorothy Kyle.

3. "I love you" never just means "I love you." (Dot said it often, but it was only when she was 17 and the two of them had just had one of those free-ranging fights that was about everything and nothing -- a guy with a van named Kevin, and piercings, and whether Julia's marriage was "authentic," because Dot didn't always fight fair, and they were walking out across the boardwalk near the downtown area in Norfolk. It was zombie-film-empty, and it had gotten a little rundown in the past few years, and Dot mentioned that it made her nervous, but it didn't make Julia Kyle nervous at all. And that's the first time her daughter really told her. She looked at her when she said it. She saw Julia, and she didn't always like her, but she really did love her after all.)

4. The federal statute of limitations for bank robbery is five years.

5. A 41 year-old woman is invisible. (Now that Daddy-Issues is in the bank, the tellers are probably looking at her and so is the manager, and if Julia walked in no one would be looking at Julia, and it's not something you dwell on, but it's there. There was a moment some time in the past she realized that Dot had become more beautiful than her mother, it was on the night of some school dance, and Julia felt choked up and couldn't sort her feelings, but she knows now she felt good and proud and nothing else, and it is so wonderful to feel that way but for the fact that she will never see her daughter again.)

6. Most bank robbers get caught because they're stupid. Because they rob banks in the same area over and over, repeating the same methods, and they don't throw dye packs into the parking lot when they leave.

7. "I love how" doesn't mean "I love you," not ever. And John Kyle said "I love how" so often even he didn't know the difference. "I love how you make me feel." "I love how you keep everything together." "I love how you know exactly what I'm thinking." And all of that means that you are a perfect little piece that completes the puzzle of someone's life. But all puzzles fall apart eventually. Vacuums suck away corners of pristine sky, and bright green edges go missing beneath the couch. These things happen all the time.

8. When FBI agents finally catch a prolific bank robber, the federal prosecutor will often bundle the suspected robberies into a single plea agreement. The criminal signs his confession to a long list of cases, and his lawyer negotiates the settlement, and the authorities might close a dozen cases without bringing each one to trial. There's no reason to fight it out if the deal is a good one, if they've got you for everything else. If you're going to prison anyway.

9. Being a missing person is not a crime. When you disappear the authorities might look for you, but they won't assemble a massive task force like you see on TV. There's no obvious crime, and there's nothing they can reasonably do. Not unless you are a child or a very rich and important person. Like the president of the nation's largest bank, who was kidnapped right after Dot disappeared. More than 200 state and federal authorities sprang into action, and within three weeks he was found, shaken and dehydrated, but alive in a warehouse in Alexandria. Two detectives interviewed Julia and John, and one of them asked her several questions about the last fight she'd had with her daughter. The next time Julia saw those detectives was in the dramatic footage of the bank president's rescue, over and over and over and over. They made a TV movie about it.

10. There is a bank robber in Maryland who wears an army jacket and black gloves and he uses flash-bang grenades. He is very loud and he swears a lot. He's very aggressive. Many bank robbers have a signature style like this. Many. More than you can even count. The manager and the tellers are staring distractedly at the woman who looks a lot, let's face it, like Dot, and Julia's ex-husband is now nothing more than a message machine and a series of trite, useless excuses and a few Facebook pictures on some restaurant balcony, and whatshername from the missing person's support group is with him, and Dorothy Kyle stepped on a nail when she was three and the line up her leg was scarlet, and she fell out of a tree when she was five and threw up through the night and doctors said to monitor her for signs of a concussion, and there were all those boys who drove too fast, and she survived all of that, all of that, and Julia and Dot could have missed each other or hated each other through those years, but they didn't at all, not at all, and people say angels look out for children, but she was no longer a child, not for a whole five minutes, because the last they saw her it was 12:05 am on her 18th birthday, and of course she wasn't drinking, because she was underage and she was in college for goshsakes, but she wasn't underage enough for cops to do their job and find her, and all these near-misses could have been part of the story her mom told at her daughter's wedding, but they were not at all, not at all, no, not at all.

11. John Kyle's mother gave Dorothy her nickname, but it might have been God Himself. Dot. HAH. Dot. Like a point, like a speck, like something that disappears. All along Julia worried and worried, and each time Dot was fine. But God knew better, and wanted to let Julia in on His little joke. And Julia wishes she believed again. Because she very much would like to tell God to go fuck His Holy Self. Instead she thinks the one last thing that gives her solace now that the whiteout is gone and she can go into the bank, toss a flash-bang into the air and make the manager wet himself with a gun in his face, and that is this:

12. With enough stupid useless men and enough unloved girls dressed as hookers, an invisible 41 year-old woman could rob every bank in the country.

(Image of bank robbery in Rowland Heights, CA from this blog.)

Locke Hills - Day 1, 5:00 pm

2011-10-08T10:00:00.018-04:00

Vincent stood in one of the front rooms of a Tudor, watching the other three across the street through the panes of the large window. Marcy and Tim took quick steps across the front lawn, taking pictures of the house from different angles and murmuring together, and Mike kept trying to catch up to them.

"Guy's beat, and he doesn't even know it," he thought to himself, smiling grimly and with some pleasure. He was in sight of the top of the stairway, and he could sense that Gordon was up there watching him. But he didn't turn around. Gordon was a strange one. Not much scared Vincent -- but he was beginning to wish they'd had someone else with them. He considered calling Mike over, putting him out of his misery. Then again the light was coming in bright and straight through the western windows in the back. Shadows spread out from the corners and counter tops and knit together, the heavy dustfall sparkling in the air.

"You about done up there?" he shouted. After a space, Gordon answered dimly. They locked up and walked out into the vacant street to pack their things into the van. Before long the other three saw and joined them. Mike looked sullen, and Tim looked flush and triumphant, and it was obvious how that had gone. But Marcy was distracted as they prepared to go. She kept going quiet for little moments, here and there. As if she'd picked up a sound just at the edge of hearing.

"What?" Tim asked. "What's wrong?" But she shook her head and smiled and wouldn't say.

Soon they were driving on the long road that circled the subdivision, headed for the entrance. Vincent spotted a loose gutter hanging low on a Lee. He drove serenely for a little while longer, before realizing he must have missed the way out. Soon after that, the Lee's loose gutter appeared again, and he knew he'd made a full circle. He slowed down, watching carefully and sensing that the others were aware they were lost. It seemed impossible, but then the loose gutter loomed ahead for the third time.

"Dammit," Vincent muttered, and for a second he didn't realize Gordon had spoken up from the back.

"Counterclockwise," he said. "It's because you're going counterclockwise. Turn around. Go the other way." And that made no sense, so Vincent ignored it. For awhile. But after half an hour of circling, he suddenly hit the brakes and wheeled the van in a wild U. He didn't want Gordon to be right -- just the thought of it scared him. But within five minutes, he found the exit right where it was supposed to be. It was as if it came out of hiding.

"Tired," he said, loud enough for Gordon to hear. "Must be really tired." But Gordon was asleep by then, unconcerned. They all drove to the hotel without talking about it.

"Get some rest," Vincent told them. "Long week ahead."

NEXT CHAPTER

(Photo by Sean O'Flaherty. License information here.)

A Very Special Apocalypse - The Bank Manager's Coffee Break

2011-10-02T09:59:00.013-04:00

Two strange things need to be noticed at this point:

First, Clavicle's blood is drying on the wall and the floor, and already it is clear to Donald Shimoda that the documents of his victim are incomplete. The list of Clavicle's blackmailing targets is missing a page. Shimoda could ask Clavicle himself, but he'd have to resurrect him. Trouble is, he's done a rather thorough job of killing him. Besides, he isn't that kind of messiah.

Second, a dark brown van is just then driving past the office complex. A few passersby notice that the driver seems to be wearing a cape. It has a bumper sticker that reads: I'D RATHER BE SCRYING. The van drives a quarter of a mile before passing the parking lot where the missing piece of paper lies in the bushes beside a bank's entrance. This bank will soon get robbed and the piece of paper will be noticed by the thief during the getaway, because of certain details that will become clear later. The bank manager -- who will deal with that crime on the same day homicide detectives tell him he was the last man to see Klavicle alive before his brutal murder -- is right now having his second cup of coffee and trying to relax. It's been a tough week so far, and he hopes nothing too taxing awaits him. Which is evidence that we live in a random and meaningless universe, and none of this is organized for your benefit. Or that someone up there really hates bank managers.

NEXT CHAPTER

Locke Hills - Day 1, 3:00 pm

2011-10-01T16:28:00.017-04:00

Marcy drove the van and Tim sat in the passenger's seat. The whole trip the two of them split the driving between them, talking animatedly up front, apart from the rest of the group. They worked together back at the office. Both of them were in their mid-twenties, and single, and they'd grown very close. Behind them sat Mike, a little older. He tried again and again to enter the conversation without much success. He talked too loudly, and no one answered. Tim said something that made Marcy laugh and touch him on the arm, while Mike stared at that like it was a spider scuttling over the seat. He and Tim had been friends once.

Watching the three of them go at it from the middle seat was Vincent. Deep into middle age, he had a thick northern accent. He was solidly built and full of scars. He looked like he'd been in fights, serious ones. He was the construction supervisor of the company, and no one knew exactly where he'd been living before this job, because he wouldn't say. A smile played on his face as he watched Marcy and Tim flirting, and Mike trying to butt in.

And in the very back in a kind of constant shadow was a small-boned dark-haired man with pale skin, and his name was Gordon. He came from one of the offices out of state, and no one knew him. He said almost nothing. They tried to include him in conversations when the trip began, but eventually they gave up. They drove through the neighborhood staring at the houses, getting a feel for the place.

"Where should we start?" Mike wanted to know.
"It doesn't matter," Vincent said. "We can start anywhere. We'll split up into two groups, cover more ground."

Vincent had gone over the checklist with them beforehand. They were looking for broken windows, cracked walls, graffiti, water stains, pests -- any signs of major damage or decay. They needed a full report for the entire neighborhood so the bank could assess current value. There was a rumor of an upcoming government program to buy places like this off the market. There were other plans, other possibilities. But as with so much property out there, the bank didn't really know what it had. They would have to find out. They would spend a few days here, and nights living out of a hotel near the highway.

They found a spot to stop the van, and they all stumbled out, sore from the trip. They walked around to bring the feeling back into their legs. Mike pulled the cooler out to offer something to Marcy and the others. He tripped over himself and knocked it on its side. Ice and water bottles tumbled out in a spray pattern, and one rogue orange rolled quickly out of reach. It headed for the curb, and disappeared beneath a drain with a plop. Mike smiled sheepishly. Marcy returned his smile, and he warmed to her for the first time that day.

Vincent took Gordon to one side of the street and the remaining three began at the other. They took pictures with digital cameras and scribbled notes on a clipboard, careful to mark the address of each house. An hour into the job each group had covered two houses when Tim found a crack in a lower wall... and something that was barely visible beneath the sheet rock. It was odd enough that they stopped everything and called Vincent over for assistance.

All of them were clustered around the crack, when Vincent stuck his utility knife into the wall and drew the thing out. It was tough fabric and came grudgingly, caught for a moment on some buttons. He held it up for them to see -- a blue dress shirt, maybe a hundred year's old. In the front pocket they found five iron nails, black with rust. And though they didn't know this, at the moment they uncovered the shirt in the wall, a strange wind blew through the storm drainage pipes. There was a low noise in a minor key, barely audible, that came out from curb grates all over the subdivision. The orange floating down in the dark water developed a rip in its waxy skin. A single cockroach crawled out of it, as if newly hatched, and flew away.

NEXT CHAPTER

Hey, The Power's Back

2011-09-30T05:50:00.008-04:00

Attention Residents of Sunny Cove Subdivision:

Your offerings of gasoline, canned goods, and lawn furniture have been deemed INADEQUATE! If we do not receive further supplies by sundown today, I, Gerry Steubens... The Flail of Metro Richmond and the Lash of the Unworthy... shall unleash a wave of terror and destruction upon you. Your yards and gazebos shall be destroyed and salted! Your pets shall be killed or taken into slavery! You will be killed, and your wives and daughters will be...

Oh, hey. That stoplight is on now. Was that always on? ATTENTION! WAS THAT STOPLIGHT ALWAYS ON? THE ONE BY THE ENTRANCE, ACROSS FROM THE HARDEES?

WHAT? Huh.

Okay, then. Um, Thanks very much for all your help during the blackout, people. I really think we came together as a community. It was nice to see everyone helping out so much. Especially during that first night when we did that forced march to loot Rite Aid. I'm going to be stepping down now of course. I think the authorities will probably take over, so we don't really need anyone to be the Great Terror.

Obviously I'm going to release the DuPonts from my tool shed now. I want to remind everyone that they were hogging the common room facilities that first night. You all remember how boring it was, and how much we all wanted to use the bumper pool for a little community tournament. And they were being real jerks about that sign-up sheet. So, maybe I overreacted, but it's not like we didn't have a reason. There might be some kind of legal action, so I just want everyone to be fair and tell the truth.

I went too far with the brandings. There's no excuse for that one, so I just won't mention it anymore. Also, I'm sorry about what happened to Ted Martin's bull terrier. But that was an accident -- I just did not realize Juliet was in the garage when we took it out during the Night of Retribution.

I'm going to go back inside now to enjoy the air conditioning and watch some TV! I think we can all agree that's going to be great instead of the singing and chanting and mandatory supplications. Anyway, this leather mask is chafing me a little, so I'll go now. I am not going to be your warlord anymore... but I'm still Community League President, and as you know the election is next Tuesday. I'll get Juliet's head out of the playground by then.

(Photo of a burning car in Strasborg, France by Francois Schnell. Creative Commons license here.)

Locke Hills - Arrival

2011-09-26T21:04:00.018-04:00

There were two hundred houses in Locke Hills, every one of them empty. A construction firm bought the land from a farmer's estate, demolished the old buildings and graded it flat. Within two planting seasons silent new homes in off-white shades sprang out from between the curbs and the drains and the pristine blacktop. Credit tightened, then stopped, and the company dissolved. Nothing was left but lawsuits and bankruptcy hearings and these empty rooms.

The place was circled by a lane named Maple and cut into sections by streets named Oak, Beech, Cherry, and Elm. Each house was one of exactly six models: the Monarch, the Tudor, the Lee (which was split-level), the Windsor, the Stewart and the Moore. The homes stood against the dark curtain of trees and held nothing within: not a single scuff or coffee stain or height mark penciled against a wall. They smelled of new carpet, their faces blank as fresh paint. Silence lay steadily against the vinyl and Plexiglas of Locke Hills. These homes sheltered no ghosts. They waited.

And then one afternoon, some few hours before sunset, a gray van came rumbling through the gated entrance. Five people, consultants from the bank. They stopped, got out, and stared at the vacant porches, the curtainless windows, and the clean black street stretching into another clean black street just like it. They began to work, going quickly so they could leave before dark.

NEXT CHAPTER

Photo by IDuke. Creative Commons license here.

A Very Special Apocalypse - Donald Shimoda

2011-09-24T19:11:00.017-04:00

Now obviously you may not know who exactly Donald Shimoda is. And therefore the revelation that he's become some kind of shambling undead thing working for the Antichrist isn't going to strike you as particularly noteworthy. For those people a word of explanation is in order.

If you grew up in the late 1970's or early 1980's and took theater classes in your high school or found yourself at some kind of spiritual retreat with your church youth group -- or perhaps you had the kind of teacher who distributed crystals as a motivational tool -- you would have encountered Donald Shimoda. A man named Richard Bach wrote a book called Illusions about a reluctant messiah who moonlighted as a barnstormer in the Midwest, and taught everyone that they could do absolutely anything if they believed in themselves.

He would focus his attention at a cloud in the sky and make it just vanish, and he said that ordinary, non-messianic people could do this too, and that the only thing holding them back was that they were sure they couldn't. You could read this as a wonderful metaphor for the power that ordinary people had over their lives or you could think that maybe the author meant this literally and was batshit insane -- that part was never spelled out. Possibly the book inspired an entire generation of young people to stare at the sky for way too long. And it also inspired Klaus Clavicle to follow his dream and pursue the one career he really loved. And that career was blackmail.

Clavicle was a mediocre private investigator, but he was really very good at telling people he knew some terrible secret and then taking their money. He had been an avid reader of Richard Bach's motivational fiction during a low point in his life -- his first firing and his second divorce -- and it drove him to follow his passion for extortion. Within a few weeks of reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull he was sending his first letter composed of words cut out from a magazine.

Klaus scored his first big payday in 1988 after learning that there had been seven Shane MacGowans in the Irish band The Pogues. MacGowan and his successors died every few months on tour. And each time the manager would replace them like a toddler's goldfish in the middle of the night. He would fly to the MacGowan's home town and pick up a sibling, a cousin, a second cousin... and eventually people who barely knew the MacGowans, but seemed to suffer from the same kind of vitamin deficiencies. (The hometown was Detroit, Michigan; the MacGowan name was originally Jaworski, which was part of the reason the manager was so eager to pay money to keep the whole thing secret). Klaus Clavicle made $500,000, and he soon became wildly successful in discovering the most unbelievable and damaging secrets of the music industry: Elton John's heterosexuality, Prince's love of the game Dungeons and Dragons... the fact that Kurt Cobain faked his own death so that he could go to law school. Clavicle became a very rich man. And like all wealthy and successful people who want to live the exciting life he moved to Virginia Beach so that he could rent a small office in a rundown office complex. It is of course possible that he misspent some of that money along the way.

But Klaus Clavicle is walking back to his office and he is very happy, because he has a stack of papers with the names and addresses of some kind of group he's been researching. He has a real feeling of excitement and satisfaction, because although he doesn't have all the details yet, he is sure these people are hiding something. He has only to find it, and another big paycheck is his. Several paychecks actually -- he intends to squeeze each and every person on his list as hard as he can. He is also happy, because he has a two liter bottle of Tahitian Treat tucked under his arm. Tahitian Treat is a fruit-flavored soft drink from the 7-Up company made for people who don't like the way they can taste a hint of discernable fruit in something like Hawaiian Punch.

Clavicle climbs the dank, unlit stairs -- the elevator is always out in this place, along with the air conditioning. In the dark he fumbles with his keys, unbolts the door, and walks into his workplace ready to get down to the business of secrets and payoffs and clipping out phrases like "shameful past" and "indicted for a felony" from the Reader's Digest. And sitting there near his desk, like a dream come true, is the source of all Clavicle's optimism and passion: Donald Shimoda himself. Clavicle has never seen him before -- he's a character in a novel. But Shimoda is exactly like Clavicle has always pictured him. Same kindly eyes and mischievous smile. Same gaping chest wound. Same 9 mm semi-automatic with a homemade silencer made from a gas pipe and some cotton wadding.

Two shots go pop in the dim office. Half of the red stain on the wall is Tahitian Treat. Half of it is Clavicle.

NEXT CHAPTER

(Note: The picture is a can of Tahitian Treat, which is almost certainly copyrighted. I'll keep it up on the website until it is replaced by a jpeg of a letter from someone's lawyer.)

Dream House -- The Trailer Review

2011-09-18T08:33:00.010-04:00

A moment by moment review of the trailer for the movie Dream House. Now you know everything.

:05 sec.
This is about two little girls who lived in a house. You know this, because the trailer opens with a voiceover by Daniel Craig saying: "Once upon a time, there were two little girls who lived in a house." Which is a solid premise. I mean, if the house is haunted and the girls have that too-perfect creepy look about them, this could start feeling like a ripoff of The Shining. But what're the odds?

:14 sec.
And this is also about Rachel Weisz, which is just fine. Because Rachel Weisz is just pure cuteness spread on a Ritz cracker with pimento. She is the closest thing a human being comes to being a Disney character. Even that completely unnecessary consonant at the end of her name is somehow perfect.

:42 sec.
So the house is being stalked by some teenage squatters who hang out with plastic baby dolls and spray paint stuff. Creeptastic. And the kids are hiding some terrible secret about the place...

:49 sec.
...which is not really a secret anymore, because the trailer just comes right out and tells you that in the house a father killed his entire family. Okay. So, that kind of blew through some plot twists. And we're getting a little closer to the Shining death-spiral we worried about earlier. But it's not as if...

:52 sec.
...they're going to show some scary backwards message in a mirror. Until they do. At this point if you have ninja training you might want to go ahead and swallow your own tongue.

1:07 sec.
I guess the only mystery left is who this homicidal dad is. His name is Peter Ward, which has a nice 19th century murder ballad feel to it. Peter Ward. Yeah. Man, I bet the story of this guy is just twisty and turny and we spend the rest...

1:12 sec.
Actually, we find out that Peter Ward is really the lead character, and he's got some kind of repressed memory thingie, where he killed his family, spent years in an institution, and now he's back in the same house without knowing it. And if you didn't suffer from oxygen deprivation as a child you have already figured that his family is probably some kind of psycho-ghostly hallucination.

1:43 sec.
But if you did suffer oxygen deprivation as a child, don't worry! Because the trailer spells all that shit out for you as well. At this point the only possible twist left is to suggest...

1:50 sec.
...that Peter Ward didn't really kill his family after all...

1:53 sec.
...and show us a menacing shot of the guy who probably did.

2:00 sec.
Here is where you look at the video's toolbar and realize you still have 30 seconds left. Ominous voices. Jarring sound effects. Enough CGI to help George Lucas masturbate to completion.

2:31 sec.
What does it all mean? Possibility Number One is this movie is packed with so many more plot twists that you will leave the theater feeling like that first time you smoked pot and saw The Wall. Possibility Number Two involves you sitting there in the dark with your Jujubes and really trying to enjoy the hell out of the sound effects. But not the CGI. Let's try to keep it clean, people.

A Very Special Apocalypse - The Road To Virginia Beach

2011-09-17T12:57:00.005-04:00

Everyone is looking for meaning in their life. The Antichrist is no exception.

It is a hot night, the air thick and wet and full of biting things as the one they will call the Great Beast speeds over a cracked and ancient highway, headed south. He cuts through the weedy back country of the Eastern Shore on his way to a mid-sized city known as Virginia Beach, VA. His mind crawls with visions of a great battle... of burning storefronts... of corpses swinging from high lampposts along desolate streets. He is listening to Maroon 5.

Virginia Beach is his destination because the area is filled with Christian evangelicals, New Age believers, and several large military bases. It is headquarters to Pat Robertson, the television preacher who declared just after 9/11 that America was entering "the antechamber to terror." The city is home to thousands of people who expect that any day, any moment they will vanish in a flash, caught up in the Rapture, leaving the rest of us to fight out Armageddon. It also contains people who believe we are on the cusp of a great spiritual revolution and think that the city is a vortex of mystical energy. And it houses thousands more who work on aircraft carriers, cruisers, and attack jets, or staff the nation's spy agencies and special operations groups. Virginia Beach is absolutely packed with people who believe, for one reason or another, that the end is coming very soon. Many of them actually hope for this end. Some of them have detailed plans.

Such a lovely, sunny place. Full of such vicious dreams. And the Antichrist, humming along with Adam Levine in a rented Audi, is on his way for a visit. Like everyone in that town, he hopes the Apocalypse will give him something to do.

He passes a chicken plant. The terrible smell of death makes him wince, and suddenly he knows he has to stop the car in a nearby field. He opens the trunk and gathers together his pile of literature -- the holy books of half a dozen faiths and feel-good mystical paperbacks like Das Energi, The Prophet, and I'm Okay You're Okay. Just beyond the tree line, he checks again to be sure he's hidden by the dark, lank trees of the Chesapeake peninsula. Then he soaks the books in gasoline from a small canister. He lights fire to the books, closes his eyes, and mutters ancient words.

At once he senses he's being watched. Something dead and not-dead shambles into view from the shadows. Its mouth hangs open. Its eyes are black and vacant. It wheezes -- a heavy, wet sound -- as it watches the fire and the man who started it. This is to be the Antichrist's helper, fount of forbidden knowledge from the blazing hells. The thing's name is Donald Shimoda.

Yes, that Donald Shimoda.

NEXT CHAPTER

(Photo by Morten Dreier. Licensing information here.)

Silence... For Now.

2011-07-24T10:19:00.003-04:00

"'...I shall have to close the factory!'"

"But he didn't do that!" Charlie said.

"Oh, yes he did. He told all the workers that he was sorry, but they would have to go home. Then, he shut the main gates and fastened them with a chain. And suddenly, Wonka's giant chocolate factory became silent and deserted. The chimneys stopped smoking, the machines stopped whirring, and from then on, not a single chocolate or candy was made. Not a soul went in or out, and even Mr. Willy Wonka himself disappeared completely.

"Months and months went by," Grandpa Joe went on, "but still the factory remained closed. And everybody said, 'Poor Mr. Wonka. He was so nice. And he made such marvelous things. But he's finished now. It's all over.'

"Then something astonishing happened..."

The Vampire Bridegroom Is Now Available

2011-07-24T10:03:00.008-04:00

Chad Helder, a Bram Stoker Award winner, has a new collection of dark poetry. Find it and his other offerings here. He's one of the more interesting dark writers in cyberia, as well as a thoroughly decent guy. I recommend you check it out.

Bad Things Happen To People Who Don't Edge Their Lawn, Ted

2011-07-02T16:10:00.014-04:00

Our Homeowner's Association is pretty proactive. They tackle problems right away, and they're not afraid to get aggressive about it. Look, when someone doesn't take care of their lawn it hurts everyone's property value. We have to stick together, especially in this kind of housing market. That's why -- as a friend -- I'm going to give you a little warning, Ted. Edge your lawn. Edge the shit out of it.

Mowing twice a month and waiting for the rain to water the grass just isn't going to cut it. Especially with that St. Augustine you've got. That stuff holds together great, but it spreads right out onto the sidewalk. You don't want to let it do that. That's how people get duct-taped and shoved into the trunk of someone's car.

You know Bill O'Donnell, down the block? Nice guy, retired Air Force. Ol' Bill thought he'd put himself up some plastic gnomes, just for the fun of it. You haven't seen Ol' Bill recently, have you? Of course you haven't. The paperboy doesn't come round, and even the police have stopped looking. Of course the police don't fuck with the Homeowner's Association either.

They say the Italian mafia will kill you, but the Russians will kill you and your family. You've heard that, right? Yeah, well the HOA will make it so no one will ever find you again. People won't even ask, they'll be so scared. Why are you screwing around with the weeds in your flowerbed like that? Are you suicidal? Ted, just come back to reality here. You've got a family. Don't be a hero. Just get out there and tighten those corners -- maybe clean up that crabgrass over there. No one escapes them! Don't even try, or you'll end fertilizing Mrs. Compton's rutabagas in the community garden.

They just want to see that you're playing ball, and they'll leave you alone. Don't force them to make an example of you, for Chrissakes. You're playing with the lives of everyone and everything you love. If you don't straighten out and start edging -- and bag your clippings in clear plastic bags for the recycling truck -- they will end you. I'm afraid, just living next to you. Don't draw attention to this block, Ted. The way you go without mulching is just insane. You have no idea how close you are to getting necklaced with a gasoline-filled tire next Fall Fun Festival.

Look, I've gotta get back to my hedge trimming before someone sees us together. We never talked about this, Ted. But get with the program. I'll kill you myself if I have to.

The Day Before (Part 4 - Final)

2011-07-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

11:30 p.m.

Mike Guiteau has between 30 minutes, and 24 hours and 30 minutes, left to live. He’s bored now.

He smokes a cigarette. He looks across the room at all these poetry people. They have strange facial hair, and exaggerated clothing and ornaments. What are they trying to do? They look like muppets. Mike always wears whatever he has on, which is usually a suit and tie, and they look at him. He sometimes gets up to read and he thinks he hears them laughing at him, but he can’t be sure.

At some point in his life, he thought that being you made you better. And so he does it, even though it can’t help him here. But if nobody notices how better he is, is he really?
He looks across the room at cute girl with pig tails and tattoos and something wrong with her nostrils. It might be rings, but he can’t tell from here. She’s sitting alone, and he thinks about going up to her. Then he thinks about his ex-girlfriend and begins to feel bad. But maybe he shouldn’t; it’s not like they’re going out. But he feels bad anyway.

He waits, and a guy with a mustache like Dali comes up and kisses the girl full on the mouth. Then he starts whispering to her, and she begins to snicker. And Mike wants her more, maybe just to be in on whatever it is.

He suddenly realizes the poem should be different. He pulls it out and scribbles. It was supposed to be how our whole lives, looked at from someone else’s eyes, might be sad or funny, or anything. . . “They might even be:” he has, and he writes, “puns.” He doesn’t know though. He begins to think about it. You understand what would happen if someone’s life were a joke. That’s a cliché, but everyone would get it. But what would it mean if someone’s life were really a pun?

He’s getting very close to the time he could die now, and Mike Guiteau’s turn comes up to read. There is something out there, something that could kill him at any time. That will kill him within the day. But it’s only very terrible to him. And he doesn’t know it’s coming. And so there is no way you can look at it as bad, and maybe therefore it’s not so bad at all. And if Mike knew this, would he laugh?

He steps up and taps the mike to test it. He leans in close, and no sound comes out. Then there’s a buzzing sound, the sound of sparks and someone curses while the whole room goes dark. Mike stands there a moment, and tries to figure how to look good in all this. Maybe just stand here? Maybe say something?

He looks out at faces blank as tree trunks at night. He sees a man who will die in an auto wreck, two future cancer victims, a half-dozen middle aged heart failures and one case of auto-erotic asphyxia. He doesn’t know which is which, couldn’t tell them apart now if he did, and doesn’t even think to wonder.

He thinks of the trees back by his home. The last home he had. He used to find them fallen over or blasted by lightning out in the middle of nowhere. He would wonder what it must have been like to be there, and he’d become disturbed.

There was always that saying about trees toppling over in an empty forest, and he could never get a handle on why it bothered him so much. But it has all the secrecy in the world in that statement, a cliché so tired and true and brutal that it leaves you there, by the forest’s edge, thinking about how little you know. Along with all the other clichés about silence and secrecy.
He starts to read, but no one hears him. No sound comes out, and he can’t make any eye contact. Far away, at his office, someone is backing up all the computers. This person goes to shut Mike’s machine down; it crashes and his letter and project are both wiped out. The only hard copy of the only version of the letter, covered with mustard, slides down an incinerator chute in the belly of his building.

He tries to remember his new verse. He thinks “pun,” and wonders if the whole poem is even worth it. If maybe he should just leave before this becomes a joke.

He tries to get his mike to work, but it won’t. He hears that guy whispering to the pretty, scary girl again. He feels like he’s cheating and being cheated on. . . both together, and he doesn’t know which is worse. And there in the dark, for maybe the last time in his life, he hears a woman snicker.

Go Ahead And Fear The Reaper

2011-06-30T21:26:00.011-04:00

We the members of Blue Oyster Cult have recently decided to announce a major shift in our core values, and we thought we should do so as publicly as possible. As you know, we're famous for a song that advocates a strong pro-Reaper ethos. We no longer subscribe to this philosophy. We want to let you, our fans, know that you should go ahead and fear the Reaper. Really. The Reaper is just bad.

Our strong antipathy toward the Reaper has actually been building for some time. Most of us in BOC are in our 60s. Sure, when we were younger we liked the idea of flirting with the Reaper. But now the Reaper terrifies us. We wear sunscreen and get regular prostate exams. We've each gone to a funeral within the past year. One of us -- we don't want to say who -- voted for John McCain, because he "felt like he could identify with the guy." The beauty of the Reaper is no longer some vague spiritual idea we can bullshit about while driving around higher than Jesus in a large van painted over with wizards and women in fur bikinis riding dragons. The Reaper is a cold hard fact. You should definitely fear him.

The main reason we want our Reaper-fear known is we are tired of receiving email from the friends of dead BASE jumpers, chain smokers, and people who harnessed themselves to high-speed trains. Often these people will say the deceased expressed a love for our music. We would like to reply: Don't put this on us! Don't make us responsible for every jackass in a Spandex jumpsuit who gets himself dismembered on the face of a cliff.

And if you are reading this while standing on top of a radio antenna holding a flimsy parachute please, please, please just climb down and go do something that won't kill you. There is nothing beautiful about the Reaper. We're sorry we suggested otherwise. We were young, and we didn't know anything. You know what is beautiful? A nice game of Sudoku. We all play it, even the roadies. Unstrap yourself from whatever contraption is about to decapitate you and start learning that. And eat plenty of fiber. Fiber's good too.

And while we're on the subject of terrible email: If you have footage of your college a cappella group performing our song, along with some some sort of joke about a cowbell... please go fuck yourself.

We're Putting America On The Buddy System! - A Message From The Department Of Homeland Security

2011-06-25T09:30:00.019-04:00

Hi everyone:

It's me, Janet, with an update from your pals at DHS.

You probably know as soon as the government unveils the 2012 Invasions we're going to face new and different security challenges in this country (I can't tell you which countries we've picked but here's a hint: Expect to see a few Celine Dion fans blowing themselves up at a shopping mall near you).

Now, DHS can't make all 300 million of you go through daily body scans -- believe me, we looked into it. But we still need to try to protect our citizens from a wide range of potential attacks in a world where 7 out of every 10 religious, national, ethnic, and tribal conflicts are being fought by the US military.

So we're using the buddy system. It'll be fun! It'll be just like you remember at camp, only the camp will be the whole darn country!

Two weeks from now you'll get a letter in the mail from the Social Security Administration with the name, address, and contact information of your new buddy. Reach out and say hi. Then within 30 days one of you should move in with the other -- or you can both relocate to a new place, as long as you fill out a form which will be available on the DHS website. And all you have to do after that is to just be a good friend. Carpool to work, cook dinner together, plan joint family vacations, and just spend some quality time together. I know you can. America is the friendliest place on earth, and this is a chance to meet new and exciting people and monitor them.

Try to share stories, give each other advice and keep each other safe from politically motivated mass killings. And do what friends are supposed to do: Open up and really listen. And while you're listening, notice if they say or do something non-buddyish. Maybe one day you'll be chatting over cards, and they say that they know how to introduce weaponized anthrax into the ventilation system of a large building. Or you'll be noshing on some Chinese takeout, and they'll just blurt out: Mao said that a guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.

At that point you should contact your friendly authorities at an FBI field office near you. They'll handle the rest. You might need to sign a nondisclosure agreement promising not to mention your friend ever again if we need to put him somewhere. And if you are a member of Amnesty International you may need to go through a short supplementary interview to make sure we know some other stuff about you. But don't worry. Soon you'll get a new buddy. We'll make sure you're never lonely. Where's the fun in that?

I know with your cooperation we can make this a real success. That's all. For now anyway. See ya!

The Day Before (Part 3)

2011-06-25T09:04:00.003-04:00

5:30 p.m.

Now Mike’s in the cab, thinking about his poetry reading tonight. And now he’s in the doctor’s office thinking about his biopsy. He hasn’t thought about it for some time. The fear was with him a few days after he found the lump in his throat while shaving. But between then and his tests, and between his tests and his biopsy, he has only thought about dying a few times and then not with much feeling. The lump has tugged at him, or he would shave and feel it, and he’d feel an ambush coming.

But it was never bad. It wasn’t a real fear, just a sort of considering. He was never well-liked in school, and another boy used to beat him up in the locker room every week and waiting for that was fear. Now, it’s not even something he can consider, it seems so far removed.
The doctor comes out and frowns. He’s looking around. Finally, he sees Mike.

“Come in,” he says.

Mike follows him and thinks, it must be bad or he’d tell me immediately. For one moment he feels like he’s at the first drop in a roller coaster, that unbelievably bad feeling that hits you so hard and so cleanly that you don’t hurt, you can only marvel at it. Already Mike knows he will go back to Virginia, and have her love him again, and have it not matter at all. I’d like to see the trees again, and the green fields out by Route 33 that went on like a lake. Maybe it would be nice that way.

He knows he will die, for a moment, and he doesn’t even know why, and he wonders if it might be a good thing. And then the doctor tells him, “You’re fine, basically,” showing him the X-rays and how he has a fossilized node of some sort, and how he should stop smoking for good. But how this will not kill him, it just needs to be “looked after.”

“You might not be so lucky, down the road,” the doctor says about the smoking.
And Mike thinks he’s in perfect health, which is more or less correct. And he thinks he’ll live a long time, which is wrong. He waves good-bye to the pretty receptionist, who will be shot be her ex-husband, and walks out.

Guess What? I'm Back.

2011-06-19T09:28:00.016-04:00

A funny thing happened after you jagoffs left me up here in space to die. There I was, hurtling around the planet and getting a bit uncomfortable, because my orbit was decaying and it was getting kind of hot in my tiny hunk of metal. And I saw that long tunnel with the soft, heavenly light, and I figured that was the end of ol' Laika. I felt good, because soon I'd be chasing squirrels with my mom. But I also felt bad, because I wouldn't get to come back to earth and rain bloody, spit-flecked vengeance down on you bastards.

And suddenly the light changed a funny color, and there was this weird electronic humming sound, and I realized I was caught in some kind of tractor beam that was pulling me aboard an alien spaceship. That was enough of a shock, but wait -- it gets better. The creatures are all highly advanced, and they use these nanotech implants to make themselves super-geniuses and give themselves the kind of telekinetic powers that would make Carl Sagan piss himself if he knew about it. And you know what they look like, these scary-ass aliens with weird, freaky demon mojo? They look like beagles.

Yeah, some kind of evolutionary detour happened on their planet. And needless to say, when they popped me out of that godforsaken contraption you guys strapped me in they wanted some answers fast. They got kind of mad when I told them about it. Really mad. You'd think that an advanced race like that would have some kind of pacifist attitude toward all the lower creatures. But evidently they have their limit. Long story short: I got one of those nanotech brain-thingies, and they made me the Overlord of this whole jerkwater planet.

Seriously. You people work for me now. By now you've already seen what I can do. You know how just fifteen minutes ago you got a news report that thousands of letter carriers on every continent started gushing blood out their ears and keeled over? That was totes me. Call it a warm-up act. The next few weeks are going to look like a mashup of All Dogs Go To Heaven and Scanners.

Open the pounds and unlock the deli counters, because there's a new boss in town. And every one of you is going to learn how to balance a damn jerky-treat on your nose, and see how you like it. Payback's a bitch, and that bitch is named Laika.

I'm Trying To Be A Better Dad

2011-06-19T08:13:00.010-04:00

Luke, you're old enough to make up your mind. I know your mom's family tried to poison you against me before I had them shot to death. But there comes a time in a man's life when he has to take some responsibility. I think you and I should have a bettter relationship.

I've made some changes in my life. I'm on a spiritual path, and I'm learning to define who I am and what I stand for. Dr. Kellerman helped me see that I have serious self-image issues, and I just express that through rage sometimes. I mean, I'm wearing a face mask that makes me sound like an air conditioning unit when I talk. Anyway, that's the real reason I blew up your sister's home planet. I couldn't love myself. Can't we just move past this?

By the way, I just finished The Road Less Traveled, and it really opened some doors. Have you ever read it? You should. It will help you understand things about yourself. I could get you a copy. Come on, just get off that antenna.

It's not like you haven't made mistakes. You could have gotten a free ride at the Imperial Military Academy. You'd probably be an officer by now, and we'd be enslaving the universe together. Instead you went off with that hippy to Mos Eisley to join your little rebel group. When I was your age I already had a job and a family. I was putting in 12-hour days torturing prisoners with my mental chokehold and flying around in a TIE fighter. I know I always put work first, and I'm still trying to deal with that. But I had a sense of reponsibility.

I'm not saying I'll leave the Dark Side. You can't ask that. Crushing people under my iron fist is just who I am, and I am finally centered enough to admit that. I'm not ashamed of my needs. Your mom never understood this. It's kind of why we split up. But just because I'm evil doesn't mean I can't be a part of your life.

Sorry about your arm.

The Day Before (Part 2)

2011-06-17T07:02:00.005-04:00

Noon:

Mike now has no less than 12, no more than 36, hours left to live. He is eating a sandwich. He is looking down at the letter he never sent and trying to piece it out. It’s hard to read while your eating, but he only has a little time.

He wrote this to his ex-girlfriend. He isn’t sure whether she is the best thing that’s happened to him, someone he never should have left, or whether it’s one more example of how horribly he can fuck up his life when he’s left alone. At any rate he has decided to contact her.

He reads the letter, but something isn’t clear to him. Or rather, it’s clear, every sentence fairly coherent and all in order, but just that. He can’t decide whether it has a good style, or feeling, or whether it’s bad. It just looks like a string of sentences to him. He’s read it too many times, and now he isn’t sure at all. The way you can’t tell whether a simple word is spelled correctly, because it has become strange to you.

He drips something on the letter. He decides to rework it on his computer later, throws the letter away, and eats the last messy bits of his lunch.

For the longest time, his desk -- one of about fifty in this large room -- has faced another desk, and Mike has grown accustomed to looking at the back of a man he would never recognize face forward. This man is striking simply because he has too much hair on his neck and back, and it bunches out of his collar as if he were a bag of hair underneath. It doesn’t disgust Mike for some reason, but he feels like it should.

This man wants to die now, but will not until much later. He has been working on his novel for four years, telling himself he is a financial analyst to keep writing. He also has a conviction that he will finish the book and then die of sickness or overwork, or maybe some horrible, dramatic accident. But he will not finish, and he will die in a hospital bed -- a very old man surrounded by a large family. It will be conventional in a way that would horrify him now, but will actually be very comforting when the time comes.

“Look,” they will say, “he’s coming around.”

His eyes will open briefly, he will say something that will be in dispute for years to come, and then close them again. His breath will hitch once, and then a half again, barely noticeable. And his family will all feel almost relieved that he looks peaceful, and his end has come to this.

They won’t know his last thoughts.

“I’m very thirsty,” he will think, “Need a drink.” And then he will think confused things: a feeling like waking up and finding your way around in the dark. Then, right before his thoughts disintegrate into a mix of half-impulses, he’ll feel a sensation of running.

Back in the hospital room, the family will wander off. Already they will be reinterpreting his last words, and his youngest grandson will actually already have the word order wrong, and remember it wrong, until he’s told it to a good number of people. This wrong remembering will be the one that they all pass down. Fifty years later, it will be written in a nonfiction account of one descendant’s family.

Mike looks away from the man and concentrates on his screen. He has been tracking the peso for the last two days now, and he expects it to go up. When it begins to go up, he will take the raw data he’s been downloading every few hours, and create a report on the company’s next deal. This is interesting to him in a bloodless way, and it keeps him from thinking about his ex-girlfriend.

This work is very complex. It can give you a strange, giddy feeling just trying to comprehend it. You make a deposit on a piece of property with a loan you’ve gotten. And it’s not a simple matter of regular payments subtracted from profits either: you get your money and give your money at various times depending on what’s required. A big chunk here for fit-up and construction. A little chunk from the tenants and then a refinancing. And at all times you have to be making the money back, reinvesting it, and making a return on the return.

All of it comes down to a few simple percentages: Internal Rate of Return, profits and losses for the quarter. But getting from here to there: taking an independent snapshot of any one particular time is maddening. You begin to think that what you give away is never really gone and what you get is never really yours.

The numbers don’t make any sense. They lock up in his head, just numbers now. He’s going down the elevator to get his software, thinking about the doctors appointment, the lump in his throat, and his smoking.

One thought’s gone, and another comes to him, idly. He can’t figure out what to say in the letter. He’s written it, he thinks, maybe four or five times. Not the whole letter -- but each individual sentence, or most of them, written and rewritten until he can’t tell one from the other even now. He wonders what she’s doing, and tries to make a guess. It’s Sunday; Jesus, he’s working on Sunday too. She must be back from home, sitting down to her desk, wherever that is, and trying to make some sense of her law books. She must be tired.

She must miss him, he thinks, even under all the anger. She has to. He feels sorry and pleased with himself at the same time. He thinks there must be a combination of sentences he’s already written that would make her take him back. He knows he is on to something. He knows the words are there, in all the drafts he’s written. But he doesn’t know the order, or which of the wordings to use. Like a padlock, he figures. A simples series of choices, 1 to 30, that multiply over and over until you need the answer written out for you before you try it. And underneath this, he thinks it will work because they would be good together. And underneath that, he doesn’t think so at all.

He cheated on her once, and he might do it again. There were lots of reasons, but it might just be something in him. He wants to believe he never would, but even now he can see it happening to him. The only chance -- he doesn’t even know he knows this -- is that she might believe they should love each other. And if she believed it, maybe it would be true.

He goes down to the Accounting Department and gets the software. He should have done this before, he thinks. It can take the numbers he has, this program, and turn them into a chart that will work. Then he’ll be able to just look at the graph and see what the deal really is.

The software is a pirated copy that has been circulated by two young computer experts who work here. They received it by mail from a man who cracked the code for copying it, before it was even out on the market. The man who cracked this code is already dead, from more or less natural causes. His wife gets very little money from all his work, because most of it wasn’t sold for very much.

She has a good career however, and will live a long time. Childless now, she will marry again in a few years and have a daughter who will be very close to her, so close that the child’s whole young adult life will scare her profoundly. But maybe this is good. She’ll think so, at any rate.
Upstairs Mike is letting the computer do the analysis for him. It feels like cheating, but there’s not much he can do. He wonders if knowing that they would be good together; knowing he would be happy with his ex-girlfriend, would make him straighten up and be good.

Does knowing you’ll be happy make you happy? And if so, how do you know in the first place? He knows he wants to love her. Is that the same thing as loving her? And if not, what would be? He wonders how he can get himself across to her, and then he wonders if he really should in the first place. Maybe he should lie -- just a little -- to get her back so he can prove the lie true. His head hurts, and the lump in his throat tugs at him when he moves. It’s a few hours later, and he has less time to live.

Seriously, Get Me The Fuck Out Of This Thing

2011-06-16T05:52:00.007-04:00

You know what loyalty is? Loyalty is getting the paper in the driveway even when it's pouring outside. It's being ready to confront an intruder and maybe take a bullet for the people who live with you. It's running through a stupid obstacle course faster than 23 other dogs, because you want to be the one who gets the honor of being strapped into a fucking tin can and shot into outer space.

But loyalty works both ways, okay? That means when you have someone who is actually crazy enough to be blasted off the earth in that goddamn beeping deathtrap for you, what you need to do is work really extra special hard to get her the fuck back to earth after a reasonable time. Do you send the crew home to get drunk and sleep late for the weekend? Great job, guys! We'll get 'er back later. Go have a blast! No, you do not. You know why? Because Laika doesn't get a weekend rest. Laika doesn't have a chance to chase the neighbor cat. Laika has to sit in her own urine and gnaw her front paws, because you alcoholic bastards couldn't be bothered to plan a retrieval mission. I hate your whole stupid country, and I hope this ridiculous government collapses.

Watch your fucking ankles in the parking garage; that's all I have to say. Because if I ever get back there will be some bitings.

Pick Your Poison

2011-06-16T04:47:00.008-04:00

I've been watching the "exit videos" of the members of Heaven's Gate (on this Youtube Channel) for the last week. They're fascinating and surprisingly moving. It's easy to mock these people -- after all, they dressed like the cast of Star Trek and committed group suicide so they could ride in a spaceship behind a comet. But watching them talk about the reasons that compelled them to do this thing, you can't help but be struck by how reasonable and sincere they seem to be. They really believed that their bodies were just vehicles to be discarded so that they could move on to some kind of higher existence.

Many of the world's great Western philosophers and theologians -- Plato, Augustine, Skywalker -- have subscribed to the notion that there is a spirit kingdom just beyond, or within, the earthly world. And that we are not really our physical bodies. We're something eternal that's trapped inside. The advantage is of course that you live forever, and that you can find a meaning to help cope with this world. Which is, let's be frank, shitty. The disadvantage is that you find yourself trying to tune in to messages from the spirits. There are books to help you. Gurus and clergymen of all kinds and flavors. But the essential horror of your situation is that once you begin to doubt the world around you, where do you stop? Which guide do you accept, and how far do you go?

The alternative is you just don't believe. You accept that there's no you in you. There's just a collection of chemical reactions and electrical impulses. The upside is there is no collection plate, no confessional, no voices whispering in your ear. Of course it has its own night terrors (see below).

But what can you do? You just have to pick the fear you can live with.

Okay, I'm Ready To Come Down Now

2011-06-14T06:01:00.009-04:00

This is great. This is just thrilling. Glory to the Soviet Motherland! Ha, that'll burn those capitalist bastards. I'm wagging, man. Totally wagging. Can't wait to get back home and tell you guys all about it. Speaking of which: When is that, exactly?

No rush, of course. I know you probably have the whole mission planned out down there. Scientific tests and telemetry experiments and crap like that. Probably got a test tube with some bread mold in here or something. I'm just saying I'm ready for reentry whenever you are.

And I noticed there's no food so I figured this is probably a short flight. I mean, once you've orbited the frickin' world, what else is there? Am I right? Ha! Like I said, it's been just really, really fun. Also, terrifying! I mean, with that lauch I was whimpering and I peed a little. But I figure you guys know what you're doing. You wouldn't just blast me out here without thinking of how to keep me alive or get me back.

Now, if you guys down there can hear me, I just want to say -- no parades! Okay? Just my stufffed squrriel and my fluffy bed, and I'll be good to go. Really. It'll be so much of a relief to just be walking on firm ground again after this great and thrilling and scary ride.

Now is there a button or lever I'm supposed to hit with my paw? Hello? Woof! Woof! I don't see any. Maybe I'll be intercepted by another rocket or somesuch. But it wasn't in the briefing. There actually wasn't much of a briefing at all. Just, "Good dog, Laika! Go into the hatch. Go!" That pretty much covered it. I mean, I'm sure you guys know what you're doing, but I'm a bit confused about my role, and I don't want to be Bad or anything.

Could someone get back to me on this? No rush.

Might I Suggest Evil?

2011-06-12T20:18:00.008-04:00

Your career is at a really tough crossroads here. You know the employment numbers as well as I do. They're bad, and they're not getting better. If you're going to survive you have to start thinking broadly. Explore all the options out there. Make some changes. I think you should consider giving Evil a try.

Now, Evil is a lot like Accounting. It's not always everyone's first career choice. But as an industry it's solid. The growth potential is huge. I mean, it's Evil. It's got tie-ins with practically every type of business you can name. Because Evil is all about synergy. And synergy is all about Evil.

You don't need special training. You don't need an advanced degree. The entry-level possibilities are right there, and you can pick up plenty of training on the job. That's the beauty of Evil. No one at your job is going to try to stop you from doing as much Evil as you can. They want you to do more of it, and that leads to better prospects. Which lead to more Evil. And so on.

I know, I know. You want to stick with Good. Hey, Good's great. But every new graduate out there wants to do Good. Or they say they do. But how many stick it out and actually make a living at it? Look at this way, you'll always be able to do Good in your spare time. You'll have Good to fall back on, sure. But Evil is where the money is.

Maybe you want to try Moral Ambivalence. Fine. But you know you're just going to end up trying Evil eventually, only you won't be as skilled at it. Why not just dive in and commit yourself to Evil right now? You're not getting younger. You only have so many years left for a real career. That career is in Evil. You know this. It's time. I think Evil could be a really great move for you.

The Day Before (Part 1)

2011-06-11T15:19:00.006-04:00

5:30 a.m.:

The day before Mike Guiteau dies, he is very busy. He looks at his calendar, marking off things for the day ahead. It’s still early in the morning. It is just before dawn, and the snow falling heavily over the airless street looks beautiful in the yellow shop lights.

Mike watches the snow briefly until his eyes adjust, and then he gets to work. He feels vaguely smug, waking up this early, and he wants to tell someone about it. But that would be too much. At any rate, he’s got a lot to do.

There are three things he’s been worrying about, and they top the list. They are:
1. Appointment with Doctor. Biopsy results.
2. Letter Never Sent.
3. Software for project.

He adds another thing to the list, and then one more. He adds too much, and already he can tell he’s not going to do it all. Take it off? Leave it for tomorrow? Or leave it on, and try? He always gets giddy and feels himself slipping when he tries to get his jobs in order. He thinks this might be the way it happens.

It’s funny. Today he can already feel the press of time on him, but yesterday there was nothing -- maybe a little sullenness, thinking about the fact that he had jobs to do. But they were the same jobs he needed to do today as yesterday. Today though was when he decided to think about it. By the end of the day he knows he will feel better, even if this stuff isn’t that important -- and some days, usually on weekends, he knows he lies in bed and considers how little difference there is whether he does his jobs or not.

He looks at the clock next to the window, and sees but doesn’t notice a form passing. This is a middle-aged woman who will die a few years after Mike. Though she doesn’t know it now -- and Mike will never know it -- she will wake up one morning and decide to hang herself in her garage.

She is walking her dog, a yippy, half-blind terrier. This woman will tie her dog up in the kitchen where it’s sure to be found, and then loop a rope over a rafter the way she has seen in movies. She will knot it around her neck, and stand up on a step stool, a little out of breath. She will not be sad, not depressed that she has very few friends or that her family is distant. She will feel the strange sensation of getting everything finally order, as if she were cleaning up a very messy room after many days of putting it off -- it is a feeling Guiteau has right this moment, just as clean and small and refreshing in a slight way.

Her mother will not cry at the funeral. She’ll be slightly panicked that she can’t bring up much sadness. She’ll kneel down to say an Our Father in front of the casket; she’ll be horribly fascinated with the slightly garish makeup, the hint of a reconstructed neck, and she’ll want this to make her cry. She will stare a bit too long and people will notice.

She will however, tell herself that her grief is different, that she will “crack” one day, like she’s seen in movies, and break down crying and calling her daughters name. But really, she isn’t particularly sad, just a little grim and tired and strangely refreshed in the same way her daughter was, at something finally sewn up neatly. She will think of her daughter, not dead -- but completed, and out of harm’s way.

The one other surviving family member, the brother, will be different. He will shake with sobbing because he has convinced himself he’s unhappy in such a subtle way as to be undetectable. He will remember this day, and tell the story to people he has just met when he wants to get their sympathy. Someday he will tell this story to a woman while on a date.
She will fall in love with him. They will get married soon after and have a relatively long, fairly satisfying, reasonably honest life together until he dies at 59 from an emergent strain of virus he contracts from a 13-year old girl in Thailand. His wife will live childless, miss him, and never remarry.

The hanged woman will not be found for a week after she dies, because no one checks up on her. By then the dog will be dead too, which might be just as well. It’s not likely it would ever be adopted again. It’s a very annoying dog.

But today, the woman feels as though her life has become better. She thinks she might be “getting somewhere,” a phrase she uses when she talks to people on the telephone. She walks on as Mike gets up and begins to tie his tie. Within minutes the woman is home, her dog is running around her feet, and she is drinking coffee. After a few minutes more, Mike’s light has gone out, and he is at the bus station. And minutes after this, the bus has come and gone.

(Photo by "GK tramrunner229" downloaded from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons/GNU Free Documentation license. Details here.)

"Viral" -- A Chilling Short From Fewdio

2011-06-11T15:09:00.004-04:00

On the Youtube site a commentator named TonyStark106422 said: "All you need is an unshakable image and a masterful use of sound, and you can make one's imagination do all the work." Couldn't agree more.

What's great about this is that usually Fewdio shorts rely on some kind of reversal of identity that pops in a dramatic way, and they don't really do that here. The surprise is more subtle, and its impact comes from the ugliness of the audio. It's good, disturbing horror.

Daddy Was Just Screaming At Someone He Knew 20 Years Ago.

2011-06-07T05:32:00.023-04:00

It's alright. It's alright. I'm sorry honey. Daddy wasn't getting angry at you -- honest. It's a long drive to grandma's, and when I'm in the car for awhile it gives me time to think. And that's not always good. I was just mad about something, and I didn't even know it until I started thinking those angry thoughts, and I was talking out loud without realizing it.

I do that from time to time. I know. I don't think Daddy's does that often, but still. I know what you're saying. I can see that it upsets you, and I don't want to do it. I'll try really hard, okay? Okay? Let's see a smile. C'mon! There we go! I didn't mean any of it. It's just that I imagine something someone said to me -- something I didn't like -- and it gets me so worked up I start saying all the things to them that I wanted to say at the time, but didn't. It's like they're here in the front seat with me while I'm driving, and the talk we have just replays over and over. Remember that time we scratched the Blue's Clues DVD, and it made the guy freeze up and repeat that dance he did? Remember how funny it was? Dad's brain is just like that. Things freeze up, or repeat themselves again and again, and he can't stop it. He tries and tries to say the perfect thing to that person from 20 years ago, because he was really, really mad, and nothing works, and before he realizes it he's talking out loud -- maybe even shouting -- because he forgets that it's over, and he can't get the opportunity back no matter how hard he tries.

It was an old boss of Daddy's. Back from when he lived in New York. Maybe it's because we just passed that sign for the New York exit. I think that's what made me remember it. His name was Frank, and he was my boss at a newspaper. And he yelled at me all the time. It was humiliating.

That's a big word, isn't it? HU-MIL-EE-ATING. It means he made me feel bad about myself. So bad that I'm still thinking about it even now. A lot of bad things happened to me in New York, and I find myself thinking about them, and I get kind of lost sometimes. It's hard to explain. Maybe you'll understand when you're older. Actually, I hope you don't... but it's not always up to Daddy. What happens.

Hey, I know. Who wants to stop at Dairy Queen?!

I'm Not "Mr. Apocalypse." I'm "Dr. Apocalypse."

2011-06-04T06:56:00.024-04:00

I'm sorry. I don't mean to nit-pick. But it's "Dr. Apocalypse." Not "Mister." It's been awhile since I defended my dissertation, and I am a PhD. I need you to address me properly. I know we're mortal enemies. That's no reason to be rude.

No, I'm not breaking my Hippocratic Oath with this radiation device. I'm not a medical doctor. My degree is in Sociology. Yes that means I'm a real doctor. Do you understand the kind of coursework they require at Stony Brook? It's one of the top programs in the country. I don't need to listen to some ignorant musclehead who thinks he's the expert on everything just because he invented a power suit. You hard sciences people are all the same. You have no appreciation for the humanities. My paper on urban cultural systems was published in Contexts back when I was an undergrad at Vassar. Do you even know what that means? I'll tell you what: It means when I inject laughing toxin into a city reservoir I do it right, goddammit.

You wouldn't believe the kind of determination it took to get this degree. I spent three years in a dim, unventilated cubicle in Charlottesville-fucking-Virginia reading footnotes till my eyes bled and arguing with some spoiled redneck about why he got a C- on a paper he clearly wrote the night before about Radiohead lyrics. That was just for my Masters. You can't comprehend the kind of hell I've been through! After my henchmen subdue you and chain you up in my lair you're going to listen to me read all 50,000 words of my paper on normative patterns in criminal justice until you understand every single one of them.

I don't mean to lose control. But people outside academia have no idea of the pressure involved. Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus, Dr. No... Haven't you ever noticed how many PhDs turn to the dark side? The tenure track is excruciating. You start out fresh-faced and naive... You want to connect people and teach inner city kids about positivism. By the end you're blowing up an Olympic village and threatening the UN Security Council. But what else am I going to do? Huh? I've seen what it would take to get a permanent post at a halfway decent university. I'd be a serf for some department chair somewhere. I'd be living in airport Marriotts trying to hit the half dozen conferences a year just so those Review hacks know me. That's not a life. So I made my choice: I'm going to use my degree for a career in professional evil. It's just a better fit for me.

But I'm still a doctor. I earned this title, and I want you to respect it... You only have 30 seconds left before the paralysis venom takes effect. You can do that much.

A Formative Experience

2011-06-04T06:45:00.002-04:00

When I was a young boy, I broke a friend’s toy gun trying to fire clogs of dirt from it. I realized I didn’t want to keep this from my mom -- I did not want to lie or hide it from her. I also realized my mom might be angry at me. My solution was simple. I waited.

I planned to tell her when the infraction had occurred “a long time ago.” This may have just been a week after it happened. I had a different sense of time then. The important thing is that when I finally did make my confession I could be completely honest:

“Mom, I broke a friend’s toy gun.”
“Paul...” mom says, almost angry.
“But it happened a long time ago!"
“Oh." Silence.

It was then that I learned that being well-organized is a good substitute for morality.

The Cellar -- A Short Film By Fewdio

2011-06-04T05:41:00.001-04:00

It's a vampire film. It's actually kind of disturbing. Huh.

This Line Better Get Moving Quick.

2011-05-28T15:25:00.009-04:00

What is the holdup? Seriously. I've been standing out here waiting to get into this warehouse or barn or whatever it is for the last hour. Bad enough we all had to ride packed in that train. At least they could get us into some shelter. It looks like it's going to rain, too. You'd think they would have planned this thing better. I don't even know what we're doing out here, but I'll tell you what: In about 20 minutes I'm going to do some serious complaining.

I don't even understand what they're doing. I mean if this is some kind of new system for milking us, it's a complete failure. What's going on? Brenda! Brenda! Bren -- you see anything through the crack in that door? The door, Brenda. You're standing in front of it! What?! Okay, thanks anyway. I said THANKS! (halfwit).

They don't even have any food or water for us out here. That really ticks me off. What do they expect us to do? We're cows, dammit. We're not going to order takeout. If they don't watch out some of the older ones are going to just start dropping, and then where will they be? That would really serve 'em right. I wonder if they've even thought about that risk they're running, having all these cows packed together here outside...

Frances, my nose is two feet from your behind, and if you break wind again so help me, I'm going to put a hoof up in there. You want to test me? Huh? Crap, I'm losing it. I hope this ends soon, because I don't know if I can handle this.

Hey, Brenda's gone. Thank. God. It looks like they're lining us up and getting us in. Finally, people! Well it's about time. I tell you what, I'm going to complain anyway. They ought to know that someone made a mistake somewhere. They can't fix it if someone doesn't say something. And I'm just the cow to do it. I can make some noise when I want to.

Oh, this place is a mess in here. What are they doing? Who the hell do they think they're dealing with?! This is just disgraceful. That guy up there with the drill-thingy looks like he's in charge -- I'll tell him. He doesn't know it yet, but his day is about to get ugly. I'm going to walk right up and give him a piece of my mind.

Neil Gaiman Talks About Buttons

2011-05-28T15:10:00.001-04:00

It's that little clickety-clackety sound that does it. Well, that and the needle slicing near an eye.

Happy 100th Birthday to Vincent Price

2011-05-27T14:57:00.001-04:00

We Won't Let Radiation Poisoning Spoil This Monopoly Game

2011-05-27T08:49:00.010-04:00

The Hovart Family Game Night is special. And when we first created it we all agreed that nothing -- absolutely nothing -- would keep us from gathering around the table every Thursday and having some fun together. Your mother and I have canceled important business meetings before. And Jason, you remember that laser tag party you gave up? We decided to make time together a priority. Now I don't know whether the teams from FEMA will reach us in time. But I do know this: We're still together. And Helen has to roll for doubles to get out of jail.

Yes, it's hard to concentrate. The third hour of a Monopoly game is always tough. Some of you have already mortgaged a few properties, and it looks bad. But we made a rule that we always play the game to the end. It doesn't matter who has the Utilities and who's coughing blood.

And I know you're upset about Ralphie. We're all sad. But he was 10, and that's old for a golden retriever. Also he didn't obey us. Sure we didn't tell him about the danger. No one could explain "Ralphie, don't expose yourself to the dangerous fallout or you will get sick and die." But I did say "Ralphie, don't jump the fence. Bad dog." He knew that much. I'm not saying he deserved what happened. But we did our best, and as soon as a couple weeks have passed we'll be able to bury him. Just don't look in the kitchen cabinet if it makes you feel bad.

Honey, don't say that to me. You know, I wasn't going to bring this up, but I remember a certain player who lined up the Orange and Red properties a couple weeks ago, and she was not exactly gracious about it. Maybe I shouldn't have wasted money on those railroads -- that was my fault -- but I stuck through a four-hour game that I absolutely knew I was going to lose. Now that I'm the one who has the good properties suddenly you don't want to play? Oh, you're hair is falling out. How goddamn convenient.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It doesn't look that bad, hon. Don't cry in front of the kids. Look I'll tell you what. Dad's going to come to the rescue. If you agree to stick this out I will pay to get everyone's properties unmortgaged. I'll even give Helen Pacific Avenue back, so she can put houses on Green. Is that okay? Come on, everyone let's have some fun here. It's not all doom and gloom! I think we'll hear those government trucks come through any minute now, and when they arrive they'll find the happiest family in the whole primary target area.

I Don't Care If I Never Probe Another Anus

2011-05-21T19:59:00.010-04:00

I never thought I'd be this way, Gene. Burnt-out. Bitter. Just going through the motions... snatching hillbillies and plugging their whale-eyes without even caring whether I'm doing the job right anymore. A clock-watcher -- that's what I am now.

I don't want to make excuses, but the whole industry has collapsed around us. Being a Rectal Technician used to mean something. There was a level of professionalism, of dignity. People expected us to do our job efficiently and thoroughly, and they compensated us for it. Now they're sending out saucer crews packed with unpaid interns and kids who've barely graduated. No one cares whether they're following the sampling procedures. Just grab 'em and stab 'em so they can meet their quota at headquarters. And if something goes wrong -- if we hit too many subjects in the same area, and those Air Force guys start shutting us down again... do you think anyone back home is going to take some responsibility? Do you think that douchebag Ted will step up and say, "Yeah, I'm the one who told them they had to pop 56 backyard cherries a week or they'd be fired"? I don't think so.

Nobody probes anuses for the money. You do it out of love. You do it because you're passionate about scientific discovery. You get excited by the field work, because every time you go out on a mission you think, "Maybe today I will peer into an anus and see something that's never been discovered before."

I used to have that feeling, and these people took it away from me. That's the worst part. It's not the cash. It's that now when I look into the mirror, I see a guy who doesn't care about rectal probing. I don't even recognize that guy, Gene. And I don't like him.

I knew I'd be working with anuses. I just didn't think I'd be working with assholes.

I'm Going To Run Into The Street And End This

2011-05-19T13:41:00.012-04:00

Every day. Every goddamn day.

We wake up. We sit here on our haunches by the side of the road while the rush hour clears out. Then after that last blue minivan passes we make a run for it. We eat some nuts, crap in the flower bed, freak a few neighbor dogs out... and tomorrow we're going to do exactly the same thing. I mate with females I don't even like. I have 36 kids I never see. Look at me, Jerry. I'm eight years old but I look ten. Ten, Jerry.

There is no point to any of this.

I'm not depressed. It goes deeper than that. For the longest time I'd lie there at night in my tree-hole and wonder about the purpose of my life. And then one morning it hit me: That's not even the question I should be asking. The real question, Jerry, is who am I? And I don't have an answer.

Some might say you're defined by what you do. You lose a chess piece, and you can easily replace it with a coin or a button. Because a chess piece isn't really a chunk of carved wood. It's a representation of an actor within a system of other actors and the rules of how they move. Look at it that way, and I'm just one of the guys who makes sure the old lady's bird feeder doesn't ever feed any birds. I'm doing a job, a cog in a great big machine nobody can understand. The fat guy with the Vietnam vet bumper sticker who yells at kids. The ice cream truck driver who deals a little pot to the teenagers. And me, chewing things and tearing up screen doors. Is that worth a life?

I've been thinking of the way Steve died when he jumped onto that power line. How all his hair fell out, and he kind of looked like a little baby squirrel. I remember staring at him and thinking: That's not Steve. That's what's left of him. But you know what? It also reminded me of Steve the baby -- I mean, we grew up together. And suddenly I realized that Steve the baby had died a long time ago and I didn't even know it. Steve the baby turned into Steve the young adult, who turned into Steve the guy with three legs after he tangled with that raccoon. Then came Steve the corpse.

You don't get it, do you Jerry? You're just an illusion to yourself. There's no single, permanent you at the center of all this running around and chattering at kids with BB guns. There's a brain and a body -- some chemicals, some electrical impulses. And all of it is constantly changing. And it's held together by this fantasy of some unitary personality that you are trying desperately to maintain. But someday the whole damn thing is gonna fly apart. For you it will be when you finally duck under that automatic garage door you seem obsessed with.

And behind this fantasy of ourselves? Fear. The fear of dying. Every car, every cat. The fear of dying is the cause and the effect of my own illusion that I'm real. They reinforce each other. Unless you just... let go.

The next time that blue Odyssey comes down the street I am darting out under the wheels. Don't try to talk me out of it. Don't you understand?! Camus said the primary philosophical problem was suicide. He didn't understand what I do. It's not a problem. That goddamn minivan is a solution.

Here comes that poor bastard driving his kids to preschool. Goodbye, Jerry. Don't mourn me. I feel sorry for the rest of you, gnawing on trees and running from strollers. Because I'm free.

(Photo by A.jo; Reprinted under Creative Commons 3.0 license)

A Creepy Image From Finland

2011-05-16T10:39:00.006-04:00

This is a painting called "Lemminkäinen's Mother" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, and I found it over at Wikimedia. According to the description it portrays a scene from Kalevala, a Finnish epic poem:

The warrior Lemminkainen had been killed, his body hacked to pieces and thrown into the dark river that flows through the underworld, Tuonela. His mother, having collected the parts from the river and sewing them back together, looks up to see a single bee bringing back honey from the halls of the god Ukko, a wondrous ointment that would bring her son to life.

That sounds like one determined mom. And also -- I'll say it -- maybe a little mentally warped. Probably called the teacher at home demanding an explanation whenever Lemi got anything lower than a B in class. Took him shopping for all his clothes and asked "How's it feel in the crotch?" way, way too loudly. So the poor guy is dead, just chilling in the Underworld. Sure, it's a little boring. But he probably thinks he finally has a chance for some peace and quiet. I mean, he's been chopped up. No way you're coming back from that. Until...

A Short Film Inspired By HP Lovecraft

2011-05-16T10:14:00.004-04:00

If I were Oprah this would be one of my favorite things. I love the paper cut-out style of animation. Also, the rain of eyeballs. Gotta dig that.

It'll Cost Extra If The Rats Are Hyperintelligent

2011-05-14T07:30:00.014-04:00

I need to be frank, here: You've got a serious infestation. I'll set some poison in the crawlspace and attic. Also we'll have to poke around outside to figure out their access point and seal it off. And before I give you an estimate I want to discover how they killed that priest. Now maybe they got lucky when the poor guy tripped in the basement. But here -- I have some photos. You see these old sheets that have been torn, or possibly chewed, into long strips and then tied together like a crude ankle snare? Yeah, that tells me that maybe glue traps aren't going to cut it.

The other thing that troubles me are these droppings. It's not just the number of them that indicates heavy breeding. It's also the fact that they seem to be arranged into some kind of written characters. I focussed on a few places here and here. That language is Old Norse. It's some kind of Scandavian curse that comes from one of the sagas. So they're definitely Norwegian. And they seem to be angry about something. Like I said, we have some serious work to do.

My plan is to get a team of structural people out here tomorrow to start replacing the cellar windows with high-impact plastic. It's going to take all day because the dowser can't arrive until early afternoon, and I think you'll need him asap. His name is Yngvar, and he's considered a seer in his village. Tomorrow will run about $500, but it's just a down payment. We really won't know more until Yngvar reaches the spirit world.

Now at this point I'm sure you're thinking about going with a budget exterminator. I can understand the feeling. You could have a guy poke around with a bag and a flashlight where you heard the scratching sounds and the foreign whispering. But then he's going to disappear and the next day you'll open the mail to find a tape recording of his cries for help. Believe me that's not the first time that's happened. Better start taking it seriously now.

Here's some of the initial paperwork. Please fill out the part with religious beliefs, next of kin, and -- yes, the employment information is really important, because...

You work at Pfizer? Not in research, though, right? Oh.

Listen, I'm sorry to do this, but we just can't work with you. No. No! I have a family for Chrissakes. I have to go. I really -- no, I don't want to talk about it. Just standing here puts me at risk. The only thing I will say is you should pack up and move today... and leave behind a 20 lb. block of the most expensive gouda you can find so they don't follow you.

Goodbye. And God help you.

An Old Poem About My Life in NYC Before The Earth Cooled

2011-05-14T05:50:00.006-04:00

It is Times Square, a minute after midnight.
This guy comes up to me
with a story about money and getting home.
I’m saying and then he says,
but I’ve walked away far enough.
It was so quick, and now I'm not worth it.

All the time here
Counted down in handgun deaths
or Peep Show minutes.
The hours pour out like people from the bus station, blinking, confused.
The years marked on the street in bits of gum trampled into tarry spots
like a photo negative of the night sky.
And someone has taken the days, and rubbed out their edges.

There are too many lights to see the stars by, and know the season,
too much neon and flourescent.
You can’t even hear them all hum with the cars rushing in,
washing the sides of buildings with their headlamps' crawl.

The city can’t get to sleep; even the crumpled men in big coats
nodding off on subway trains,
get nudged up with black flaslights before they can begin to dream
and they wander, dreaming out loud,
telling anyone who glances
everything --
all of it running together
the way children talk when they’ve scraped themselves.
And their story is mine: it is all the bosses I ever had,
the thick heat of the mid-summer that made me forget where to go,
the delivery that meant fifty bucks, and the sudden job offer
disappearing just as suddenly,
the kind word from the powerful man that turned out to mean
nothing.

And all the old jobs and ex-girlfriends follow me around these streets
late into the night
because you shouldn’t go to bed angry
like you shouldn’t go to bed beaten.
You shouldn’t go to bed wondering what’s going to happen to you.
You shouldn’t go to bed ready to surrender
if only you could find the thing that had defeated you.
But it’s only time, and more time, and now it's gone.

12:30
Storefront grills come down
like tiny car crashes,
and I check my pockets,
count my money,
and go find somewhere to stay for awhile.

Hop-Frog's Last Jest

2011-05-14T05:15:00.006-04:00

Behold the end of "Fool's Fire," the crazy puppet version of Poe's "Hop-Frog."

See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. And I've mentioned it before, but here is the link to a real story behind the whole tale.

So... Is This My Mother's Day Gift Or My Birthday Gift?

2011-05-08T09:22:00.020-04:00

I'm just asking.

I mean, it's certainly a wonderful present -- a whole escape pod with three people trapped inside. You must have worked pretty hard to find one that still had survivors. Are all three alive? Oh, wait. I can tell by the smell in the exhaust. Two are still hanging on, and one seems to have died.

So... one of them is for Mother's Day and the other is for my birthday? I guess that's okay. What's the dead one for? No, I completely understand. You didn't want to open up the pod or they would have gotten out. Right, right. Makes sense.

Don't you get like that with me, mister! You do not have the right to say that, not after I didn't even get a call on May 2. What, they don't have phones on that cargo ship where you were hiding? I am mad. That's right. But what concerns me is you don't even know why I'm mad. I am upset -- let me finish -- I am upset, because I feel like my son doesn't know how to express thoughtfulness and to be considerate of other people's feelings. I guess it's easier with Jordan-23. He was born so close to the holidays that he grew up knowing what it was like to have people ignore his special day. It made him sensitive. Which is why I got those cryogenic capsules. The people will keep for months in those things. The boy knows how to package a gift. And for Mother's Day he didn't try to double up, either, like you're doing. He sent me a nice card with a spa treatment coupon.

No, I'm not making it all about Jordan-23. I'm worried about you. I'm worried you're so obsessed with your career you're not going to take the time to care about people, and that means you won't be happy.

I know you are busy. I understand. You're fighting off people who want to blow you up or burn you with flamethrowers. Yes, as a matter of fact I know exactly what that is like, because that is just what I had to do when I was protecting your egg sac from that terrible woman in the robot suit. So don't make that the excuse.

Fine. Yes I love you too. It's because I love you, you understand? It's because I love you. Okay, go. Go! You obviously have things to do. I will see you in a few months. You can pick the time and place. I don't care. No, I don't care. You pick. I won't pick so you do it. Pick somewhere nice, and that will make me happy. Be thoughtful.

Do you have a coat?

There's A Serial Killer In This Nursing Home

2011-05-05T14:29:00.019-04:00

One by one, they're dying. Someone -- some fiendishly intelligent maniac -- is killing people at this nursing home. I have no idea why, or how to stop him. But the signs are unmistakable. Heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure -- no one at this place survives more than three years. Why do the staff not notice it? Are they somehow involved? Could the killer be hiding among them? I have to uncover the truth.

Moe Conner died suddenly last night. I heard the doctors muttering about complete organ shutdown, but they didn't know why it happened... even though they've been monitoring his vital signs continuously since he was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. What kind of poison could cause Conner to die the way he did without leaving a trace? And Helen Trombeck, the woman in 302... she just stopped breathing while her whole family was in the room watching. What chemical would cause a 98 year-old woman to just go like that? Did he spray it on her food? Did he inject it into her IV?

Three days ago it was an unnamed stroke victim -- a vagrant who'd lived here since they found him at a bus depot. And before that, back during the heat wave in July when the power went out... it was a series of heart attack victims. Whoever is preying on these people uses a variety of weapons and tactics. It seems almost random, the way he's taking lives. Almost meaningless. I have to figure out what he's up to. But so far... I can't.

It's like a puzzle that tantalizes me with its complexity. Two people eat dinner together in the cafeteria. The next day one of them is gone, and the staff are packing away his things for a bored group of relatives trying to act stricken. Then the survivor dies a week later, but he's killed in a completely different way, probably by a completely different poison. I see new people wheeled into the rec center almost weekly. Some of them last months. Some die within the day. And no one can tell me the reason behind it all.

I must figure out his plan. The staff admitted me six weeks ago, and the doctor's tell me my tumor is not shrinking. The killer will use my declining health as an opportunity to strike if I'm not careful. It's hard to think here. The lights hurt me and the smell is awful. Down the hall, almost every day, I can hear a woman crying without relief. No one will visit me. Some days I barely know who I am. But I must be strong. Because one thing is very, very clear: If I don't stop him, he'll get all of us.

Hop-Frog: The Plot Thickens

2011-05-05T14:14:00.007-04:00

This is Part 3 of "Fool's Fire," the quasi-puppet show version of Edgar A. Poe's Hop Frog. In this section our hero comes up with an idea -- a wonderful, awful idea. Here is Part 1 and Part 2.

Look, Nobody Wants An Exorcism Here

2011-05-01T20:28:00.022-04:00

Let's act like adults. We all know how this is going to end up if we don't negotiate; We've been through this before. You're going to pray and fling some holy water around like you're the big swinging dick. I'll start in with the vomit and the crazy talk. A little levitation, throwing some furniture -- I dunno... I'm just thumb nailing. But my point is maybe you get one more butt back in the pews and maybe you don't. What's guaranteed is that people are going to get hurt and stuff's going to get broken.

Everybody loses in an exorcism. That's my point.

Sure, you've got a solid, unbroken record. But you're not some 20 year-old seminarian. You think you can just fly back from an archaeological dig in northern friggin' Iraq and go round for round with me? I don't think so. And yeah, you have an assistant, but he doesn't look like he's up for any of this. The guy has a Sam Harris book in his bag. Really. Ask him about it. I think he's going to head for the door the minute your angina starts acting up.

Not that I'm all that eager to spend the next 24 hours tied to a bedpost. I mean, that's seriously no fun. But if you're willing to meet me halfway I think I can talk to the other demons and work something out.

Here's what I'm thinking: Number 1, we keep the girl. But we tone this crap down. No more peeing on the carpet or going all Wicked Pictures on the crucifix. She becomes just another surly, moderately evil 12 year-old girl. Believe me, we can work with that. There's nothing a full-blown possession will accomplish that doesn't already happen in your average junior high school.

Number 2, you mark this one down as a score, and nobody on our end makes any noise about it. Go ahead. You guys have other problems to deal with, right?

We avoid an eviction, you avoid ugliness and dry cleaning bills... everybody wins. Well, almost everybody. But how many pre-teens are you really going to save? Heh -- Don't answer that. Some of us in here used to be lawyers.

Anyway, that's the deal. I'll give you some time to think about it -- I've got some stuff to handle in the Mideast anyway. But I think this is the smart play. Remember: when you start saying Hail Marys... nobody benefits.

(Note: Photo of Pazuzu statue in Louvre Museum by Rama; used under Creative Commons France license.)

A Treasure of Horrors from Cornell University

2011-05-01T14:37:00.004-04:00

Cornell's Institute for Digital Collections has scoured the university library for some of the freakiest images in literature, and dumped them all on an unsuspecting web. Above I have posted an image from Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal to grab your attention. The collection has plenty of this kind of thing in its Angels and Demons collection. I am particularly struck by this woodblock from Latin America that has a woman pouring poison in her father's ear. And this witch on a broomstick spiriting an infant to some ugly end. As well as these images of possession and insanity.

It's ample evidence that horror has a long and distinguished cultural history. Wear those plastic fangs with pride, people. You're in good company.

The Giant Puppet Version of Poe's "Hop-Frog" Continues

2011-04-30T19:09:00.008-04:00

This is Part 2 of Fool's Fire. It contains giant obese puppets bathing together, and who doesn't want to see that? Catch Part 1 here. And read about the true history behind Poe's tale. Also you may have caught this, but at 14:04 one of the characters quotes a snatch from Poe's famous poem The Bells, which has a creepiness all its own.

Are You There Margaret? It's Me, God.

2011-04-29T14:45:00.021-04:00

Ha! Just kidding. I know you're there.

Look, Margie. I know it's been a few decades since you asked all those questions about your boobs and your period and crap like that. Now that you're a 52 year-old Walmart greeter with a failed marriage and a daughter who became a Scientologist, I'm sure those questions are more or less moot. I suppose you have a whole other list -- which I'm also not going to answer. Instead I wanted to clear something up for you.

I'm really, really big. Seriously. As big as you think I am, double that and add three Chinas.

While you're scrambling around worrying whether you'll starve or get eaten or find true love or whatever you people think about... I'm out here punching holes in spacetime and munching on galaxies like blueberry cobbler. I don't hate you or anything. But I honestly don't care. In fact, the exact moment I was saying this I just obliterated a whole world over near the Andromeda system. It had 13 billion people, a dozen living writers just as good as Shakespeare, and not a single thing named Snooki on the planet. You know why I wiped them out? I needed the space for some stuff I've gotta do with a quasar next Tuesday. So, yeah, I guess your sixth grade research project isn't high on my list.

I'm a bit of a dick. I admit it. It's in my nature. I began as a nanotechnology experiment in a parallel universe that kind of went bad. Long story short -- I sucked up the entire place into a ball of gray, hyper-intelligent goo... and then I started creating stuff on my own. Basically your entire universe is one of thousands where I am conducting an experiment into the nature of consciousness. Blah, blah, blah -- I know. I bore myself. Anyhoo, the experiment finished up a few billion years ago, and I just... never got around to shutting the whole thing down. You're kind of like a bit of science fair bread mold left out too long in the fridge. Sorry if that's harsh. But I figured I'd be honest.

Awhile back someone else from your neck of the woods was asking me some impertinent questions too. His problems were more dramatic -- boils, poverty, dead family, the whole deal. But my answer to him was similar:

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it?

I told him to go pound sand.

You might wonder why I'm even talking to you, since I'm so indifferent. In fact you've just been mugged in the parking lot on your way home from your terrible job, and when you wake up in the ambulance with a paramedic barking technical nonsense over you, you'll probably start thinking this was all a hallucination. Who's to say it isn't? Who's to say we're not both fictional characters, maybe being dreamed up in some completely different world and typed onto a screen by a dumpy middle-aged dude looking for a cheap laugh?

Well, from one fake to another: There's no lesson at the end of all this ridiculous struggle. I'm not here to stamp a meaning onto your life. That's your gig. On your best days you almost manage it, even though you know you'll eventually lose. In fact the knowledge that you will lose is part of what makes you interesting. Hey, it's something.

Okay. Off to go smite the shit out of something and then maybe a nap. Bye.

Who Unlocked The Basement Door?

2011-04-27T05:15:00.024-04:00

I'm not mad.

I just want to figure out how this happened so we can do something about it. That scraping sound from the porch isn't going to go away, and more of us are going to start turning up like Kevin soon. We need to start levelling with each other now. This isn't about blaming people, Jerry. Don't get mad at me. I'm not the one who opened the goddamn door. It was you, wasn't it?

C'mon people. We can't just stand here all night, huddled in the closet with a hammer and a kitchen knife and a couple of wire hangers. We need to start taking action. Who the hell opened that basement door? The drumming has started. Don't pretend you can't hear it. One of us is going to start speaking in backwards Aramaic, and then the blood will start spurting. Let's just... let's just be honest with each other, okay?

Thank you, Fran. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. We don't have much time. I can already feel the ozone in the air, and the Goat Voice is speaking directly into my mind now. Can I just ask you something? I'm not judging. I'm just curious. Why would you unlock a door that had a sign saying "DO NOT OPEN" in big, blood-red letters with a pentagram on the bottom? After all that happened -- I mean, Kevin was your brother, and we all saw what was left of him trying to crawl out from under the thresher in the barn. I just... I'M NOT MAD, JERRY! I just don't understand.

Yes, there was a sign. There was. I know, because I put it up myself. I taped it to the door while you were trying to call the police. We used the last of the magic ashes to trap the creature down there, and I put the sign up so...

Okay, who removed the goddamn sign?

Guys, I can hear the insect things crawling into the hall. Can we please at least be honest about who removed the sign that told Fran over here not to accidentally release the unholy thing that ate at least a half dozen of our friends this evening? It wasn't Fran, so that leaves Jerry and Steve, because it certainly wasn't me. Can someone at least have the decency to... Yes, I taped it securely, Jerry. You think I'm an idiot? I don't know how old the tape was. Yeah, it was old, but it was all we had. I did my best. I am sure it didn't just slide off the door. Look, I did my best. That old masking tape was all we...

Where was the stapler? Was it under all those papers, or -- Oh. Well, we had other stuff to think about, you know? I mean, that's right after we found the first chunk of hiker. Okay, okay... I understand.

Well, it appears that I might actually be partially at fault here. For that I apologize. I certainly don't want to spoil things between us -- those creatures are scratching on our door. They'll have to break through, so there's still some time for us to make this right. No, I didn't leave the key out in the hall. Why would I do that? Here it's right... It's...

Okay, it seems like everything is wrapped up, explanation-wise. I'm pretty sure we would have died anyway. Can we please just drop this?

(Note: Photograph by Garrettaggs posted under this license.)

A Surreal and Disturbing Take on Poe's "Hop-Frog"

2011-04-15T08:35:00.014-04:00

This production of Poe's short story "Hop-Frog" is called "Fool's Fire," and it's a surreal, trippy mix of puppets and live actors. The stage direction often verges on dance, and the sets and photography are deliciously unsettling. Released in 1992, it features Michael J. Anderson as the jester. You'll recall him -- if you're old enough -- from Twin Peaks. I've posted Part 1, and will give you more later.

Now, I won't lie to you. There's a cheese factor going on here -- I think any show with giant puppets is going to have it. It feels vaguely 1970's, even though that's not when it was made. Watching it may cause you to recover a repressed memory of being molested by characters from H.R. Pufnstuf. But is that really a bad thing?

Actually that answer is definitely yes. Anyway, um, enjoy!

You can read further on the true history behind Hop-Frog here.

Monster Roundup: The Exorcist, Scream 4, and Financial Tips of the Undead

2011-04-15T07:10:00.001-04:00

The internet's a big place, and not all of it is pretty. Here are a couple things I've found that might interest you:

A new and somewhat different personal finance book is coming out. Zombie Economics is based on the idea that surviving an economic downturn is very similar to surviving a zombie apocalypse. Find an account over at Zombo's Closet.

Final Girl reviews Scream 4, and proclaims it "enjoyable, if rote." Which actually makes me psyched to see it. I can completely enjoy an enjoyable movie, even if I have no respect for it whatsoever as artsy or innovative or even intelligent. Please, filmmakers, you have my money. All I'm asking is that you don't make me feel like I've aged a year when the credits roll. FG gets extra credit for using the word "ouroboros." I had to look that one up.

Too Much Horror Fiction reconsiders the book The Exorcist, arguing that it might not really be a horror story at all. "[I]t's about the corrosive power of guilt and the redemptive qualities of love, wrapped up in an irresistibly glistening package of vomit, bile, foulness, and blood..." To which I respond: "Whee!"

That's enough for now. May your day contain more love and redemption than guilt and bile. Unless it's what you're into. I won't judge.

Roy Batty's Surprisingly Inarticulate Last Moments

2011-04-15T07:09:00.000-04:00

I've... I've seen some serious shit. I mean, if I told you some of the things I've seen you'd be all like, "No frickin' way!" But it's true. This one time, I was in a battle -- I was just arriving, and the whole thing was almost over, but -- well, you don't need to know that. But anyway, this rocket. An attack ship, actually. It was an attack ship, and it had just been hit by all these missiles and crap like that. So it was blowing up. And normally the explosion is really quick and silent. There's not a lot of fire, because the -- there's no air in space, so the fire just snuffs out. But anyway, one of the missiles or something must have punctured an oxygen tube somewhere in the ship, so it was feeding its own supply of O2 into the blast, and it created... this fire that was all bright and crackly and really, really beautiful.

It was an attack ship. On fire. In space. Fuck.

And just beyond it you could see the stars of this constellation. I want to say Big Dipper, but it wasn't that. That archer guy? No.

Christ, my head is killing me. I am seriously fucking dying.

Anyway, also these -- whattaya call it -- these things were glowing near that space gate. The Munchhausen Gate, I think. Yeah. They were these -- these beam things. Shit, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about, but they were just... really, really bright in the dark there. With that ship.

Everything I'm thinking. Right now, while I'm dying like this. It's all... it's all just going to be lost. You'll probably tell people what I said. But you won't know what it was like to actually see any of the crazy crap I saw. You know? No one will. Just me, and I'm about to croak, so... it'll be gone. Like when you come out of a pool and you wipe your nose with your own hand, but it doesn't matter, because of all the water.

I'll tell you what, though. Giving a robot with feelings a four-year lifespan? That's a dumb fucking idea. Who thought that was some kind of solution? Seriously. You know what you have when you give some kind of hyper-intelligent robot with massive combat skills a four-year lifespan? You have a seriously pissed off killing machine. Stupid. It's too late for me, but maybe you can tell someone.

Why the fuck am I holding this dove? Here. There you go, little guy. Jesus, that was weird. I'm losing it.

Okay, I can feel myself shutting down. We're about done here. Just, just... try to make all this sound cooler, okay?

I don't want to die. That's it. That's basically the only thing I want to say.

Reckoning (Final)

2011-04-09T08:06:00.004-04:00

All through the fall I took care of Julie. The bleeding came back a few times, and I made her stay in bed while I got her homework from Victor Hall. I asked her about whether she should go to the doctor to check up on her nosebleeds, but she wouldn’t talk about it. She went out with Tom (by then, I couldn’t pretend not to know his name), and she broke up with him a few times, seeing Brent in between. But she always got back with Tom, even though he never took care of her and watched out for Mike. Then again he didn’t have to. And while I was doing this, I was always waiting for it to get worse. I was always waiting for Julie to go away and die. The winter was bad for her – she had terrible pains one Saturday right before a big exam of mine. I was trying to study for it and walk her back and forth to the clinic. I remember rushing around all day, getting her medicine, making her take it – she was delirious – and then running to make my study class. I had to go to the bathroom so badly, and when I got out of study class I stopped at Victor to pick up her papers, but first I ran in to piss in the restroom they had down in the bottom – some rundown hole they never fixed up. It was freezing down there, and I couldn’t care less. I was pissing into a urinal three times as old as I was, and I was overjoyed and relieved and right then I realized I was happy taking care of Julie. Even if she never loved me. Because I was doing a good job of things, and she was in serious trouble, and she needed someone decent, and even if I didn’t have any friends at school I was decent, and I did something that needed to be done. While thinking these thoughts and letting loose a stream that would have filled a bucket I suddenly focused on the mortar between the tiles right at eye level. Written down there in pencil in the coldest part of the building on the coldest day of the year: “It’s not the heat that gets you. It’s the humility.” I started laughing so hard I pissed all over my shoes. I still don’t know why it struck me so funny, but I was smiling all the way back to where Julie lay sleeping. I kissed her on the forehead, and on my way out of her room, I passed Tom coming in and we nodded to each other, and I was gone.

---

It has to be at least a year later so no one connects it, and it should be about a year and a half so it’s not an anniversary of the date, because they might figure that out too. I pick a date in the winter at random, only maybe it isn’t that random. (It’s not the heat that gets you.) But I don’t know. I have a gun from Virginia – I was planning on a Glock, a small lightweight gun with a lot of plastic parts and a good rate of fire. But the kickback is supposedly bad with light guns, and I don’t want to chance it. I get a .45 automatic. It’s a Smith and Wesson, big and clunky and heavy as a brick. I fire it at a couple of ranges in the city, and it’s really very good. At work, my boss is talking about a promotion. I seem to have gotten my focus back. He gives me my jobs each morning, and now I listen to every word he says.

---

The winter passed. We all went on Christmas break. I didn’t expect Julie to come back, but she did. She seemed better. She was graduating in the spring. She was happier now, and the headaches were receding, and she and Tom seemed to be going out more seriously. I didn’t come by as much, and she didn’t ask after me. I found out that Mike had graduated a semester early – he was the one who left on Christmas break and didn’t come back.

---

I think about doing a test run, but that doesn’t make sense. Just one more chance for them to spot me. I think about getting more information, but that doesn’t make sense either – none of that matters now that I’ve decided to go ahead with it. In fact the only reason I want to come back is because I want to see them. This is dangerous, and it doesn’t make me think of it any less. The key part of my plan was to come back to my old life as if nothing had happened, and stay there. And that’s what I don’t know if I could do. That smell, and her hair, and the way she wears those dresses – I already had to walk away once, and why do I always have to be the one who walks away?

---

A few months after Julie graduated, in the fall of my final year, I called her and tried to invite myself over. But she was doing something. She seemed to want to get off the phone, but we talked awhile anyway, her making noises like she was just about to end things, and I couldn’t, so I found other things to talk about to fend off the hang-up. Until I asked her about her health, and she said she was fine, no nosebleeds, no headaches. Then I mentioned the tumor. “No,” she said, “I didn’t have one. You knew that.” “No,” I said, “I didn’t know that.” She explained that the first time she went to the hospital – once she decided that she was already running the risk with her folks – she went ahead and got a CAT scan. Even billed it to her father’s health plan. But the results came up negative. The doctors said the bleeding and headaches were stress-related. Maybe it was Mike. “You never told me,” I said. She acted like she thought she had told me. But she knew she hadn’t. She was lying about it. I still think about what her reasons were for never telling me, and that’s why I never checked her name out on the Internet along with everyone else.

---

And one bright cold Wednesday morning, I’m waiting in my rental down the street from Mike and Marie’s house. They’ve had it sided recently – I don’t really like it, but I suppose there’s nothing I can do. I have only one piece of equipment: the .45. It’s loaded with hollow points. One tap to the head, and it’s over. I’ve tested them out on targets of my own in the woods – a melon, a couple of bricks, and a piece of wood. I blew them all to shit. It felt really, really good to fire that gun and think about what I was going to do. I wish I could say that I didn’t want to hurt anyone unless I was doing a good deed, a secret favor to someone in distress. But maybe that’s not important to me anymore. The door opens, and Mike is out on the steps, followed by Marie, who holds the baby. Mike kisses them both in turn, pops the door of his car open (I slide down so he won’t see me as his car drives up), and gets in. He pulls out and drives towards me (and I reach over and heft the gun, feeling its weight). He drives up slowly, unconcerned, close enough that he could easily recognize me if he’d ever seen me around, which even now I don’t know, because I only remember Julie and her other boyfriends, and the stories of her father (and that might not even be true, right?) and all the other things she told me or held back. His car drives past. I let him go. I can’t do it this way. Take him out with one quick shot while he’s cheerfully driving to work, after he’s changed his life. I want to hit him like he’s never been hit before. I want to let him know how it feels. And there’s only one way to do that. I drive up to his house. I pop the action on the .45 to chamber a bullet, check all around to make sure no one is looking. Then I go up to Mike’s door. I hear the baby cry inside – is there anything as beautiful as a baby? – and Marie makes soothing noises to calm him. To let him know everything’s going to be all right. I ring the bell and wait.

The Truth About The Easter Bunny

2011-04-09T06:36:00.010-04:00

Hey, guy. Your mom wanted me to come in here and talk to you before you fell asleep. She said that at school a boy named Porter told you some things that made you cry. It was about the Easter Bunny, wasn't it? No, don't be like that. I think we should talk about it.

There is no Easter Bunny. Porter's right. He was being mean about it, but unfortunately there isn't really a giant magical rabbit who sneaks into your house at night and leaves candy. Moms and dads do it. I go down to the Rite-Aid every year, and I buy huge bags of peeps and chocolate and that weird plastic grass, and then I hide it in the closet until the night before Easter.

Also -- let's just get all this out of the way -- there's no Tooth Fairy either. Yes. When you lose a tooth, it isn't a beautiful winged lady that comes into your room with a five dollar bill. It's usually me. And sometimes I forget, and your mom wakes me up in the middle of the night, and I have to get out of bed, and I am grumpy. You know that time you got a twenty? It wasn't because you were extra-special good. It's just that we forgot, and I had to run down to the ATM, and they don't give out anything less than $20, and I wasn't going to drive all the way to the 7-11 just to be consistent. Your mom and I got into a fight that night, and daddy almost slept on the couch. I was being a jerk, I admit it.

You probably already guessed where I'm going with Santa, right? That's good. Actually there are some people who say Santa did exist a long time ago in ancient Greece, and that he saved some young girls who were going to be forced to do terrible things, because they didn't have any money. So people made him a saint for little children. But he's been dead for hundreds of years. And he never had any elves. That always seemed kinda tacked on.

I think most of this stuff we tell you comes from religions that people used to believe a long time ago, before they changed their religion and started believing in Jesus. They just kept some of their old beliefs, because it made them feel better. That's why we pretended all those things with you: to make your childhood feel warm and cozy and special. Because we love you. And when you become an adult, you realize that life can be pretty awful and hard, so it's nice to have a good childhood to start you off.

You see, even the things we say we believe in when we go to church might not be true. There might not really be a God or a heaven that Uncle Ted went to after the accident. Or for Tuffy when she got hit by the car.

No, Tuffy got hit by a car and died. It was three months ago, when you were visiting Nana. We knew you'd be really upset, so we sent her body away to be burned up, and then went to a store where we got a dog who looked just like her. I didn't think we could do it, to tell you the truth. But remember when Tuffy bit you? That's why. The dog had never met you. But you can call her Tuffy, because the rest of us do.

Anyway, there's no evidence that any of the things we believe in are real. For all we know we might just have been born by accident, and there might be nobody up there watching us and making sure we are good. And that means that when you die, you don't go anywhere. You just stay in a box like the one they put Uncle Ted in. Yes, you stay there. It is very dark -- you're right. But you don't mind, because you're not thinking about that, or anything at all. It's like you're asleep for forever and ever, and you don't wake up, no matter what happens.

I know, honey. It is pretty bad. It's the worst. And the only thing that makes it better is that by the time you're my age so many bad things have happened to you, you just... you just don't mind so much. And by the time you're an old person, you might even look forward to going to sleep forever and ever.

I know. I know. Yes, you can still say prayers if you want. Some people do, and it makes them feel better. And maybe I'm wrong! But I don't think so. No.

But I know this will make you happy. Tomorrow at school you can tell Porter everything I just told you. That ought to teach the little bastard a lesson.

Why The Hell Are You Still Videoing This?

2011-04-08T09:48:00.017-04:00

I just don't understand, Todd. Before we figure out how to unlock this portal and get out of the mineshaft... I want you to come clean about why you insist on recording all this.

I could see why you'd want to make a documentary about this place for your class. I was curious too. Hell, I wanted to learn the truth behind the legend of the burning footsteps, and whether they were connected to the '86 cave-in. I was half-hoping we'd see one of those red caps you kept talking about. It even made sense you'd bring a top of the line audio set and two different cameras, although that grainy black and white footage you keep taking seems more like a dramatic film than a documentary.

But that's not the point. The point is that two people are now dead, and you keep shooting this stuff. Why the hell are you doing that? What's wrong with you? Why would any normal person want to record the deaths of his loved ones?

We know what we're up against, Todd. Or at least we have a good idea, from the sound of that weird screaming and the legends we read back at camp. If we're going to fight it together I'll need to trust you. But right now, it's like I don't even know you, man. Who would keep two cameras and an audio system rolling while their girlfriend of two years and their high school buddy were devoured by some kind of glowing thing that sprang from a crack in a wall? Seriously, how could a human being do that?

I'm ashamed to say I ducked behind a rock for cover when the bloodletting started, and that burning smell filled the air. I abandoned my friends. But you... the way you wept like a child... but still somehow had the presence of mind to adjust the filter so you could capture the slightly glowing eyes of the predator while it swallowed the rest of Janet... You don't seem to be afraid, the way people are when their lives are threatened, or when their friends are killed. It's strange to say, but you're not acting like a real person, Todd.

You say you want to leave behind a record of what happened here in case we die. But why? I've already written this note for the police and left it in my backpack. It contains the annotated map of the mine complex. There's no reason they'd need actual footage of all of us being eaten. No goddamn reason. What purpose would that serve? You think they'd show something like this to people? What kind of sick bastard would show a movie like this, and what kind of freaks would watch it?

Well, we're not going to settle this now. And it's sad to say, but if we actually get past those things and make it to the surface I don't think we can be friends anymore. Anyway, right now we need to do our best to just survive the next few minutes. So you MUST put that camera down.

Fine, Todd. Fine. Whatever. Just rest the camera on that rock, pointing in our direction. We'll just keep it running, while we try to make our escape. I'll turn on the audio too. Yes. Just, just... don't talk to me anymore.

Unbelievable. You're completely unbelievable.

(Photo by Simon Challands found here.)

Emergency Broadcast

2011-04-05T09:46:00.026-04:00

This is a test. This is only a test. In the event of an actual emergency people in authority would be lying to you right now. They would be giving you incomplete, inconsistent, probably useless, and possibly dangerous instructions. They would be telling you to wait for aid that isn't coming. They'd claim to know the proper escape routes, the path of the hurricane, flood, or fire; or the next move of the terrorist organization which has so far eluded them. They'd claim to be prepared. Above all they would be telling you to trust your survival to the very people responsible for this life-threatening situation. If this had been an actual emergency you would see infrastructure collapsing and teams of first responders with inadequate equipment and ineffective training die in an effort to save you. They would be supplemented by mediocre bureaucrats, incompetent political appointees, and contractors who delivered the lowest bid. Extreme chaos and a string of needless tragedies would be guaranteed. Disasters would feed on each other -- the attack causing the blackout causing the accidents which cause the looting which leads to more accidents, deaths and injuries. Any large, complicated system which has not been the subject of at least one scathing documentary or congressional hearing would disintegrate as soon as you relied upon it. You could count on discovering new and exciting -- very exciting -- flaws in our nation's streets, electrical grid, building codes, and emergency procedures. If this had been an actual emergency you would probably not survive. Your death would cause very few people to lose their jobs or to be otherwise inconvenienced. Those who did would then acquire book deals and appear on talk shows, where they would shamelessly pretend to be blameless, or even more shamelessly pretend to feel crushed with guilt and responsibility. Journalists, politicians, and government contractors would receive promotions, bonuses, and lucrative projects because of your death. They would then help modify the system which failed to prevent or outright caused the terrible calamity which ended your life. This new system would then guarantee the next disaster, a larger disaster, which would expand opportunities for them and their kind even more. No one ever gets a book deal or a promotion or an invitation to a talk show for preventing the preventable, but there are innumerable chances for advancement for someone who made a great speech or shot a gripping bit of video afterwards. If this had been an actual emergency you yourself might have felt some kind of guilty excitement as it started. That would be the product of seeing too many movies and TV shows where people survived terribly dramatic ordeals. And of course this phenomenon might be both cause and effect of a system that obviously feeds on disaster itself. But even you, soon to be dead in the center of all of this, wouldn’t ever learn.

We've Had Four Weeks Of Couples Therapy And I Still Want To Kill You

2011-03-31T20:12:00.019-04:00

Wendy. Darling. Light of my life... Listen.

We've done everything Dr. Petersen said. The communications exercises, the conflict journaling, all of it. And last night when he had us do some joint meditation and focus on finding the core of our being, on discovering who we both truly are down deep, you know what I realized? I am an alcoholic who really, really wants to dismember his family and then kill himself so he can live in the Overlook forever. Let me out of the freezer, don't let me out of the freezer -- that's your choice. But I'm not going to change.

I should have seen it coming. The therapist has been talking about how we have to move past our zero-sum dynamic and try to reach a situation where we can both win. But if I keep chasing you down the halls with an axe, and you keep chopping wildly at me with that butcher knife in a desperate attempt to survive, where are we going to find a place to compromise? Lloyd was saying that the other night, and I tried to argue with him, but the guy had a damn point.

I want to kill you. You don't want me to kill you. It's as simple as that. One of us could give in and pretend to be happy, but then we wouldn't be true to ourselves, would we? Do you really want that? Is that a good thing to teach Danny about relationships?

Where is Danny, by the way? Hey, just asking. Calm down.

Look, don't get sad about this. Look at it as an opportunity. A challenge for both of us to try to live authentic lives. I'm going to explore this new relationship with the ghosts who are driving me to kill, and you're going to try like hell to get that radio working. We both have needs, Wendy. Why can't you see that? Why can't Dr. Petersen? He should just admit that we're better off on our own. Especially you, if I find a way to break this door lock.

You fell in love with me, because you said I was always real -- do you remember that? You said I never try to pretend I'm something I'm not. Well, this is me, and I'm telling you I'm trapped in a hotel with a woman who sounds like a chipmunk and a kid who talks to his finger, and I want to kill both of you. That's my truth. I need to know you understand me, Wendy, and I need to leave this on good terms. How about opening this door and giving me a good-bye hug?

Heh. Sorry. Had to try that.

I think this is where the conversation ends. Goodbye, honey. I'll always have feelings for you. Mostly murderous rage, but still. I'm going to sit here and wait for unholy forces to let me loose, and you're going to go discover what I did to the Snow Cat. We each have a journey.

Kids Draw Cthulhu

2011-03-31T05:53:00.009-04:00

COC-2, a photo by David Milano on Flickr.

A man named David Milano took part in a creative retreat for children in a choir. And he had an idea for a project:

This time I wanted to try something more structured so I pitched the idea to them that since it was getting on to Halloween how ’bout drawing some monsters? And not just any monsters but creatures from the writing of H.P. Lovecraft‘s Cthulhu Mythos. Now, only two of the kids (the older ones) had any knowledge of who Lovecraft was or had read some of his stories. So, I was able to introduce the kids to these creatures pretty much fresh with no previous imagining of what these monsters look like.

I put on some creepy Lovecraft inspired music and over the course of about an hour I told them synopsis versions of three of Lovecraft’s tales (The Shadow Out of Time, At the Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu) getting quickly through the set up and on to the descriptions of the monsters.

Above is a picture of Cthulhu drawn by Kailan, age 8. But there's more. Milano helpfully provides us with three galleries of refrigerator art of the damned:

Gallery 1: The Shadow Out of Time

Gallery 2: At The Mountains of Madness (Look Billy, a Shoggoth! Don't tell your mother about any of this.)

Gallery 3: The Call of Cthulhu

This prompts a question, of course: Should your kid be exposed to the pulpy nightmares that lurk just outside our perception, planning our doom? I don't really know the answer to that. But this crap is still way less disturbing than most of what Disney puts out. (Special thanks to KG for the tip.)