They call me the breeze flasher

I may not be workin' for MCA, but I'm workin' for something. That something pays nothing, bien sûr. Lousy, cheapskate internets.

The pen laid perpendicular to the blade throwing burnished gold in sharply angular directions with each shift of my slumped-over form. Pater, père, vader -- I quickly feigned heavy breathing, the cat dashing for cover -- Vater, πατέρας, padre, pai, отец, grapheme stacked upon grapheme in an ever ascending pile threatening to tumble and crush my spirit I don't know how many times, mirrored by an ever descending staircase to nowhere but one more restless, dreamless night in this uncomfortable hovel.

Defiant, I barely managed to stand up, a cut, crooked finger wiping my brow before admonishing the adversary in a deservedly prejudicial inquisition.

"You fucking pest, each and every one of you. What really galls is that you goddamn knew it, took pride in it, placidly staring back hour after hour, month after month, silently relishing this dejection on my face, the fucking salt in my eyes, this sweat, but it dropped on you and it burned, you can't fucking lie to me, don't even try. Remember: you're nothing but long-dessicated tattoos on stretched and scrubbed flesh and your primeval meanings were etched deep inside your rounds and crosses by us, not you, never you. We made you."

I stopped to catch my breath.

"I hope you swallowed that hubris and fucking choked."

Again. I felt I was going to heave.

"No, I know you did, because the very second you were this close to death by asphyxiation -- believe me, I heard your labored breathing, how it jangled and coughed and nearly expired like an old engine struggling up a mountain road, my arms raised in praise to an indifferent cosmos who casually waved me off but I didn't care -- you vomited up your so-called cleverness from an abysmal reservoir that's had me dog-paddling in its boundless ocean, barely afloat with your poisonous incantations seeping through every pore."

My rage bored through the enemy, all but taking bloodied respiration with it. The cut, crooked finger dropped with the rest to the edge of the weathered oak desk as I summoned one last bolt of energy.

"I was tired, am tired. so very tired. But no more. Oh, I'm exhausted, but I've won. Go on, think of me as the schlemiel, but who carved out your secrets, who emancipated after all of these centuries your little ruse that tried so hard at an unsolvable complexity? Some sexless monk buried in a stone cave, walls and skin and bad haircut blackened by acrid torch smoke, Cheetos-stained computer hackers slaving over superheated microprocessors and empty cases of Red Bull, an over-educated half-wit lost in acres of dog-eared pages and margin notations so illegible a burgeoning insanity looped back on itself to lodge gunmetal grey on the tongue? That's right, motherfuckers, me, me and my Little Orphan Annie decoder ring."

10/6

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat
my brain just went splat, spit
gore, alleyways flush with flesh and bone,
scarlet stone stained agitated tones.
Violence! Violence! for twelve pence
and not a shilling more,
I'll be your self-inflicted whore.
Mind, would you mind, toss Gutter out!
Rot rot rot, these rivulets lie
in a state of regret so I imagine this and that
'cause I don a mad hat, and rarely underwear.
I kid, I kid, don't need that on video.
Nudity? That's fine, I meant tea time,
one lump or two, I've got two. In my pants!
Chance rhymes with that, acid in the Thames
is the most plausible explanation
for orthographic prestidigitation, peyote
from somewhere beyond the sea.
Bobby, sing another one 'cause I can't,
even in looking glass fun. Ask my eye,
'tis no fib, rib-tickler -- listen,
and bring some of that old fungal magic, too:
ask twenty baroque or an austere two,
ask 'why is Poe like a china hutch?'
That went over like a lead balloon,
so I should skedaddle
and paddle towards tunes with or without a fiddle.
Play that funky music, organ grinder!
No, it really does grind organs, yours,
if you don't shut your fucking piehole
and who doesn't know a cannibal
or three? They even made a movie,
filmed in the usual place.
Would I, me, like to be served to we on a plate?
There's the other! I never lie.
The reviews are in, hit rewind,
they're all the same all the time,
ever listless hour fast-forwards this single-camera crime.
Inherit love, hate from yellowed days -- wait, wait, wait,
scrub a dub blood, it never goes away.
You can't kill what's already dead.

Look ma, hands!

I see the duplicitous frogs are at it again. A crying shame to be sure, but maybe you leprechauns should've kept a few snakes around.

Oh well, I bet the *chuckle* USA *chortle* will do *guffaw* well, whatever the *wheeze* draw *bwahahahaha*.

Nous avons faim

The long shadow of the Place Vendôme fell upon us before she was bluelit, nearly vanishing in the diffused light, nearly taking us with it. For just a moment, how I wished exactly that. Given what had happened in the intervening decades, we -- I -- could have lived with such a dénouement. I tried to think only of the task at hand, one so dear, so vital, to the both of us, but that delicious memory, along with so many others, welled up from the deep, cresting and crashing in a tearful cataclysm as I read her barely legible script.

I thought of Père Lachaise and the two of us leaning against Proust's tenebrous slab trying to outwit each other, and how I so often failed. I remembered the narrow black doors of Chausson's famished crypt and arguing over which was better, the concert in D or the trio in G minor, making up by zigzagging hither and yon until one of us caught the other. And now, she would be joining that exclusive company, not in that most famous necropolis, but somewhere close.

Then, when I played Come, heavy sleepe, she had laughed, not at my choice of Dowland, but at my bold step of something unexpected, something old in lieu of the ubiquitous goodnight kiss. My rewards were bushels of those evening after evening as we greedily explored the unmapped places of the world and each other.

Now, she looked at me with those sad, grey eyes resting against the cold, wooden headboard, and I thought of when we learned each other's secret so long ago, promising to keep it safe no matter what.

Her sallow, motionless face belied the warmth still coursing through her body as I took her wrinkled hand in mine. Despite the condition that had sapped her once fierce strength, she managed to grip me tightly, conjuring a primal fire one more time. Whatever splendidly destructive passion that once separated us fell away as crumbling masonry, revealing the graceful, unbreakable foundation beneath.

Those heather pearls sifted the air above before descending to meet me, a gentle, pink smile painted on her weary, yet still beautiful face. Her lips could no longer speak, but she voiced thick volumes with her silent plea, remembering our mutual promise. Of course she remembered. I cried, as did she. Whomever was left was tasked with keeping our secrets. I never believed that I'd be the one.

I kissed that gentle, pink smile in the lengthening shade and watched her eyes close for the last time, waiting for her breath to vanish in the diffused light. When it did, I wept, then sat stunned as a giggle broke through the inexorable cascade. This time she would have laughed at me for such childlike hesitation. Werewolves are a bit too gamy, even to us ghouls, but a promise is a promise. Rest in peace, my love.

The Tenth Circle, A Play In One-Half Act

Characters
Agent Stockholm, intrepid government lackey
Syndrome, noted archfiend

Interior, SYNDROME's Fortress of Black, Naughty Evil. The villain has trapped AGENT STOCKHOLM in his Apparatus of Apparent Apparel.

















AGENT STOCKHOLM: "Do you expect me to talk?"

SYNDROME: "No, my dear agent, I expect you to watch!"

The first grisly image appears in hi-def.


















AGENT STOCKHOLM: "That's it? About as frightening as my string of ex-wives. Nice picture quality though, old chap."

Ever classy, SYNDROME nods his appreciation.

AGENT STOCKHOLM: "However, I heard that you were a supervillain. That's not even a cat you're stroking."

SYNDROME: "No, but it is the flesh of the last one to cross me!"

AGENT STOCKHOLM: "Yawn. Try again, nefarious ne'er-do-well."

SYNDROME: "You'd be well advised to watch your tongue. I might make it into a sandwich."

The second grisly image appears in hi-def.


















AGENT STOCKHOLM: "Amateur. Is that the sickest you've got?"

SYNDROME: "Methinks your brazen tone will go best braised --

dramatic pause accompanied by an off-stage organ riff

-- if you survive the final horror."

The third, and final, grisly image appears in hi-def.


















AGENT STOCKHOLM: "NOOOOOOO! You bastarrrr......."

AGENT STOCKHOLM faints.

SYNDROME: "Muahahahahaha. Time for dinner."

SYNDROME rubs his hands together like all supervillains do after having taken a squeeze of anti-bacterial. An undercooked Big Mac is nothing to trifle with.

fin

Lens flash

This week, a snapshot.

The old camera had been in a box for decades, the pictures never developed, and now with the prints in his hand his blood ran cold from looking at the images that came from it. The proper term is discolored, but there was nothing wrong with the rich, cerulean hue his skin had become, for he felt blue. Don't misunderstand, he felt, flesh and bone synesthesia. What was improper was the sharp pain, as if his blood was no longer simply cold, but crystallizing, a million shards erratically coursing, lodging themselves in the walls of his arteries --

veins, dizzy --

cold, it's dark -- so dark --

Billowy, white flakes fell, and fell, as they always do in Montana. Being snowed in was commonplace. What wasn't was the stench that reached into town the following spring. Weasel's decaying body was found lying next to a thin stack of black and white photographs blurred beyond recognition by household mold.

Idle blogs are the workshop of some guy with a telescope

Even if you knew of this set's existence, it still isn't funny, no need to tell me. Unless the devil uses a telescope to see whom to tempt next in the nebula of Hollywood stars that is us unwashed masses. Are we not bags of gas collapsing under the weight of our own hubris?

Exactly how far away is hell? Utah? Texas? DC? A boiling pot in Uzbekistan? Giving a public speech above the arctic circle while naked? No, I haven't forgotten about Sartre, but there's no one around, thus, I'm in purgatory. Heaven is a child's fantasy. Playing a Lego harp would be tough.

Anyway, that's gotta be quite a trek, and if I'm the big evil cheese or one of his nattily-dressed minions, hitchhiking is out of the question. Would you pick up a guy with horns? Unless it was a viking -- not one of those -- brandishing a broadsword or axe and he threatened to steal your wenches and drink your mead. You don't need to be versed in Old Norse to see that Olaf is really Olaf The Angry. Here, take the car, good luck driving this horseless carriage.

Modern man 1, dark ages doofus 0.

I am aware of a branch office less than fifteen minutes away.















And I've got Ray Rice in a couple of my fantasy leagues. Quel dilemme, whomever shall I root for? Unless a Kurt Warner Chipset 3.0 gets implanted in The Decidedly Unmighty Quinn and the Browns win 45-38, Rice gamely running for 236 yards and five touchdowns, I'm sure it'll be 45-10 against. Yes, I'm boldly predicting a garbage-time TD for us. I live on the edge. Unless I don't. Unless. On lesse, vpon less, on lasse.

Lasses aren't less, you misogynist English bastarde. Would you look at that, an entire post filled with nothing but hot air. Listen to the sad, pretty music and contemplate something of import to you. Just be somber about it.

Trisketdekaphobia

I don't know what's a scarier fate to your bowel obstruction,















getting hacked out by a bloodthirsty maniac,
















or getting cleaned out with thresher-like precision!

Don't have a cow, I'm formally apologizing for the udder crapitude of this shitty post, but sometimes you're the wheat and sometimes you're the chaff, and that can chafe especially if you're using the wrong detergent or reading the wrong blog.

The night time is the right time

A grey figure sculpts stoic pathways out of the marble darkness; within, the ever-beating decay where blood and sweat and joy and pain all pulse, longing. For what, that's up to your fevered brain and split soul. Sound, like distance, remains ever cold, yet takes turns shouting and whispering in your ear that you are indeed alive, indeed warm despite the frigid evening rain lashing your face as you breathlessly chart the shadows that steal between streetlamps, that lurk around corners and in ratty concrete, that skim pooling acid tongue to leer through hazy portals and seasons stuck on echo. Still you manage to uncover new ways to glow in the dark, find your way to anywhere but here, a flâneur à l'intérieur.

That most famous of flâneurs, Charles Baudelaire, held in very high esteem by T.S. Eliot, was nonetheless subject to a backhand: his apparatus, by which I do not mean his command of words and rhythms, but his stock of imagery (and every poet's stock of imagery is circumscribed somewhere), is not wholly perdurable or adequate. Those same charges could be rightly extended to these Swedish mood rockers (and every band since the dawn of recording technology, and Thomas Stearns, too, when not busy restocking with stolen goods), for they mine the same earth, explore its every crevice, every unmarked place on that map. Given that this album is a shade more textured, a tone less immediate than her predecessors, will this, despite their masterful craft, prove to be a problem?

A stellar triumvirate opens with black and white oscillation in and about omnipresent, sheet metal riffs, yet Forsaker never abandons its most effective weapon, the voice of Jonas Renkse. I'd wager that there's many a goth band who'd pay through the nose for his services. Next, the match of The Longest Year is struck, breathing in the spaces before the cascade thunders, lines soaring above to spiral black omens until the oxygen burns away, back down to the languid pilot light. Atmospheric in their own idiom, less ambient, more tangibly transient, the evaporating, Opethian condensation of Idle Blood smears a windowpane, the butterflies-in-stomach aftermath of "you claim to be my long absent friend/you are the cancer that just moved in," truly one of the band's most stunning pieces.

Onward Into Battle takes awhile to do so, the quiet less effective, less perfectly formed this time around, until saved by a jazzy syncopation. Perhaps in time it'll blossom as that circular hum trapped before Liberation, blooming in blue, subdued electric fire. The Promise Of Deceit drowns in that same electro-splash before a wall of sound, reminiscent of Dispossession in sludge, debt unpaid, crests over the marching refrain.

With a glorious tip of the fedora to their doom-laden provenance and, yes, those fields, the march slows as the leaden weight of evening gloom pushes ever down, Nephilim shoulders heave and give under an audible bass grind -- this is certainly the band's most three-dimensional record yet -- the soul receives but black skies, a New Night. A stroll alone before struggle springs out of pale red strophes on the back of rippling riffs, filling the head for just a moment until the next neon storefront reflection, whose placid, fluorescent hum works best in headphones, as do the breezes of warning and escape blowing over "our names chalked," the Inheritance that tangles someone else for a change.

But again we wake to Day and Then the Shade, the metronome ticking a bit faster, a keyboard strata à la Last Fair Deal Gone Down layered over propulsive riffing, a definite album blacklight. Dusted Ashen chords strengthen with a second-half, 70s rock backbeat married to a vaguely uplifting harmony line, but those are the two sides of the Katatonia coin, hope and despair, heat and cold colliding, melting to leave us wading through a slushy, virus melancholy. The gracefully drowsy, hypnotic Departer closes and aims to soothe, "I'm so rash compared to you/surrender, it's the path of our lives." Now that's a comfort I can wrap my heart around.

Perhaps needing a bit more time to simmer than past efforts, Katatonia, if not equaling their artistic pinnacle, have presented another darkly shimmering collection of hymns documenting this beautiful sadness that always seems most appropriate when waiting for a late bus in precipitation-soaked sneakers, everything humming a lost, overcast chorus on repeat, repeat, repeat.

Happy Killbot Factory Day

I'm going to celebrate the same way I do every year,
by watching The Fall of the Roman Empire and Reds.

Uncanny resemblances

I'm sorry, but even if

1) you histrionically throw gangsta signs to no one in particular from your bus seat,

2) you presumably know the lyrics by heart (though I wouldn't because this mp3 player goes up to eleven),

3) you have Tupac's name tattooed on the back of your no-neck,

when you look like this

















it's hard to be convincing. Points for effort, though.

Revolution 9

Number nine
Number nine
Number nine
See, even I reference those overrated bastards
Just read the goddamn story you cheeky bastards
Before slinging arrows, you filthy, massy bastards

Since you brought it up, lies, damned lies and statistics perfectly document our situation. No, not one of those cliché dance numbers with fiery, brimstone sequins and horny cartoon devils that seduce with pitchforking torch songs lamenting seven deadlies gone by, but the glowing slow burn count of dukes and barons and other assorted minions of your precious manorialism. Check your worksheet, work the numbers, checks and balances, find everything is out of balance and watch a rusty equilibrium belch rivulets of evanescent blood at regular intervals, like demonic clockwork.

Oh, we tried to compromise, stopped making hands and digits out of the bleached metacarpals and phalanges of children -- but only because legions of cauldrons went on strike at midnight. You ever try to get the stink of boiled flesh out? Not enough Lysol in the world, my friend, just don't tell a soul -- appearances and all that -- merci beaucoup. This disguise? Not quite brilliant, I'll admit. Only the most naive wouldn't expect me to show up in a pinstriped three-piece splendidly bisected by a silky Salvatore Ferragamo. Or one on the most whimsical of voyages down this or that rabbit hole. Being numb, and as comfortably as possible, I understand.

Fantastic. Find redemption in earthbound salt. Who do you think jumpstarted the whole thing? One then two then a hundred then a thousand and soon, your legion was far more domino than ours could ever be. Sleep, my child, sleep, dream of glittering, faraway lands, romantic poetry pursued by soft kisses, ones with tongue if you're feeling extra frisky, grilled cheese and swigs of ale after every score, loved ones seated 'round the table on every feast day, a flash blizzard closing every cubicle; for when you wake, it will be bright, and you will trip into the fire birthed from your own lighter. You're god. Don't spare the relish.

Come on and take a free ride

No such luck with the motorized automatic car machines, but check out this sweet gig we picked up for a song and twenty bucks because the seller didn't like our singing and demanded that we leave:













Fun for the whole family on those Sunday rides to and from Shirley Temple of Set services, en plus, 'tis convertible into a patriotic self-defense unit














in case of zombie apocalypses, Muslim (um, Muhammad, don't kill the army, kill in the name of the army, pay attention, doofus!), Christian or Jewish ones or the Browns ever showing their face in public. This is why Buddhism is a crappy belief system. Where are all the exploding, bullet-riddled bodies, all the flaming lakes of blood, all the thousands of yards given away? Yawn.

Does it come with 8-track?

If I may steal a famous line, no time for blogging today, my sometimes-better-half and I are currently hitching rides with axe-wielding cannibals from lot to lot trying to purchase a brand new used junker. I'm hoping the various saleshumans look like this,


















but I'll probably get this over and over and over:















Which of course is a non-issue since I'm out and about with my lovely sometimes-better-half concerned about fuel efficiency, not ogling, silly me.

Casting couch

Waiting with bated breath baited by incessant waiting, you thought I had plum forgot. Sorry, peaches, I remembered, oh, I remembered, but then I remembered that I had forgotten the kernel of the next installment. Or maybe even how to write; I can't remember. So if the quality has dipped not once, not twice, but thrice in this pastiche of noir parody, I blame you, not the Yugoslavs, for they are no longer -- pretend you didn't read that.

Leon awoke, groggy, finding himself sprawled out on an ottoman, his faux leather bomber draped over him like a makeshift quilt, which he found strange because this strange room strangely decorated to please none but an Ottoman princess was very warm thanks to the roaring fireplace.

The orange tongue flicking its glowing tip on brick of Byzantine porphyry, the girl with the coffin curl flicked her own as she leaned forward on the edge of a lushly upholstered couch, shadows and the slit in her lustrous, patterned gown straining under her curvy movement. She caught him eying her smooth, pale flesh, as white as the skin of, say, oh, a vampire, but we already covered that.

"Awake at last. One could say, reborn."

Leon's body both shuddered and tingled when she ostentatiously emphasized the last syllable. He struggled against the bonds of discovering a pithy response, though he was free to stand up and be counted. They were alone.

"Where am I? What happened?"

"You are in my....chamber. Mind if I smoke?"

Leon meekly nodded his approval after she had already lit her Winston-Salem, the flame illuminating her neon green irises. Lost and confused, he presumed that he had suffered a concussion.

"As for your second question, Paddy, come sit next to me and I'll reveal every little secret that your Irish heart desires."

She patted the plush surface, staring at him soullessly, purring like a lioness ready to paw her prey into bloody submission. Exhaling, the deliciously acrid smoke cascaded over her ruby red lips as her nails of the same color tapped a subtle rhythm on her exposed thigh. Hypnotized, and beginning to wonder if she was even a Daughter of the Bohemian Yugoslavs, Leon rose, rigid and, as coolly as his staccato gait could hide his fright, stopped not dragging his Irish heart around and carried it to the cushion so soft, all but holding it in his smitten hands for her to devour.

"You are wondering if I am even a Daughter of the Bohemian Yugoslavs."

"The thought has crisscrossed my mind once or thrice."

"I just love a man who says thrice."

Fidgeting, his suave exterior betrayed, of course it didn't help that he wasn't wearing his faux leather bomber, as vital to his secret agent mien as the blanket is to that of Linus, Leon's lips moved to speak but ceased just as quickly.

"Ah, yes, my dear, dear Paddy, what happened this evening. All of your queries shall be answered in time," she said, smiling. "I'd stake my life on it."

Tune in sometime next spring when we find out what role, if any, the diabolical Empire of Transylvanians has lurking beneath the barely-scratched surface, whether vampires, if they exist, which they don't, we already told you, are spearheading the nefarious plans, if they exist, of the diabolical Empire of Transylvanians and, lastly, if I can manage to keep the barely-there plot above running water, which in some folkloric strains, has been known to impede the progress of vampires.