To my left, a record

Disintegration. Of structures, of relationships, of mind, of flesh. Death, taxes, annoying customers and that. Inevitable. Inexorable. Thus when it comes, and you're stricken with a raging fever, a violent fervor, you best channel it, lest it devour you from the inside. Hellhammer relatively smoothly, Celtic Frost with turbulence. Rage, man from Switzerland, rage violently, and give countryman Giger a call on your telephone machine for a suitable reflection. Something nasty. The timeless horror that breeds in the noxious crevasse of the human spirit. Gather a likewise band, bleak pranksters this Triptykon, then hit record. Then we listen. Will we smile?

Two minutes of crawling chaos 'til the midnight cataract murders most foul and with precision. The demonic swarm of Goetia, the final word is theirs alone: drop such domineering, illusory dyads. The rusted troposphere tone of Frost's swansong is now sculpted subcutaneously: the initial strike of Huysmans' bellringer Carhaix au contraire the lumbering reverberations. Swift beginnings, torpid finish. With such augmented efficacy, the finest album opener in many a lunar cycle.

Fischer & Co. vs. the sludge monster. A strangled rasp and insistent drumwork (Norman Lonhard shines on this album) plot the topography of the Abyss Within My Soul, a Lovecraftian blasted heath, slow and ill luminous, so redolent of Cathedral's molasses-in-winter debut LP. Peel the veil, see In Shrouds Decayed, the hypnotic, bastard genetic moisture of Into the Pandemonium, Sisters of Mercy and The Swans. The selectively deployed creaky croon has improved to the point to where I'm convinced therein lies the faintest hint of Peter Murphy.

The Shrine echoes a 103-second gloomy sustain, announcing the hyperthrash/To Mega Therion mashup of A Thousand Lies. Sure, we receive fewer instances of the nigh-incomprehensible, snarling Warriorism of old, and the main riff isn't an immediate soul-destroyer as, say, Dethroned Emperor, but if this was a disgruntled employee, he'd be enrolled in anger management. Of course, he'd hit back with Descendant, a penetrating smear of laborious grime; listen intently to pick out bubbling veins below V. Santura's gurgling feedback, then get sideswiped by the vicious coup de grâce.

Subversion is the law of the Myopic Empire, a march undercut with piano and Vanja Slajh bass grind, a song that might require repetition before a comfortable settlement inside this listener's files. A dozen spins shall confirm or deny. The cradling dirge of My Pain mostly works in no small part to Simone Vollenweider's lullaby anchoring the bittersweet tang of this rotting sanctuary. Now it's time for mass. Ladies and tophats, open your hymnals to, given its near 20-minute length, the aptly-titled The Prolonging, a shifty, metalized neo-prog workout, leaden chunks of barks and chords falling about, stops and starts, boredom is but a fantasy save for you short-attention span wankers, wisps of plucked strings and tom hits spiraling: as you perish/I shall live. Submerge.

Comparing Eparistera Daimones to Apocalyptic Raids or the initial, crucial Frost output is an exercise in futility. Those releases laid the still-eviscerating blueprint that's been xeroxed a billion times by every black, death and extreme metal act worth its salt, a singular atmosphere of time and place and shadow. Perhaps only Slayer can lay claim to such a vital influence from those heady days. Here and now, as is so often not the case, the primary creative force didn't willfully engage in a campaign of misinformation: this is his darkest (read: lugubrious, grim) work yet. His best? Another question entirely. (The correct answer is Morbid Tales, if you were at all curious, and you are.) A logical extrapolation of the themes and sounds of Monotheist? Certainly.

We listened. We smiled, like Vlad before his forest of the impaled. Tell me again anger and hatred and despair aren't useful emotions. They'll come in quite handy this afternoon, when I'm still down here in this dump instead of at home watching Arsenal vs. Barcelona. In sum, despite a few niggling faults, a motherfucker of a record. Serving suggestion: in the witching hour, with headphones.

Flash again

Was sick as a dog-faced boy.
Chewed up this line like a toy.
No fiction for you and you and especially you
so read these bus scribbles and then we're through.

Until next time, 'cause what else am I gonna do?
Oh, there's a story. Disagree? Stick your head in the loo.

What do you see when you close your eyes?
Wax fedoras bleeding from theirs:
fetish dolls without a care & with no one who can.
Below underwater glow, glam octopi tangle
their fingers in ours & those, pull & swim midst steel
sheen, drag mobile cage between hither & yon. Past banquet
glass, menagerie of desperate corpses comes, floats.
Do not wait out this black & white night.

Sift a box of sand or be killed by too strong a word.
Dare: go on and retort with new murder: with the bends
see how far you'll go, an old step at most.
To hear songs to burn in hell to:
keep quiet here. You say you won't
go too far, I know. I said I won't. I
told you I won't. You might
in another life. Would I see what I do when I close your eyes?

You salty dogs

Green.















And Boehner orange.

What color is your rock salt, New York? Boston? Chicago? Oh, that's right, you're still using pasty white cracker banality while we're a non-stop neon Mardi Gras.

America's most miserable city? Chortle.

The last shall be last

Doing my duty as an patriotic American while deviously wearing the guise of creative communist -- take that, arts community! -- I recently helped boost the flagging economy by finally purchasing a digital camera 75 years after their introduction. I can only hope the party will approve of my subsequent work and then perhaps, Lenin willing, I shall be nominated for the Stalin Prize. I promise I won't sell out like that jerk Prokofiev, swear.

Well, off to poorly compose some utterly forgetful imagery. Think I'll see any scantily-clad ladies? It's supposed to hit near 40°. At any rate, purty pictures make blogging even easier for a lazy bum like myself.

Hope it's as fun a toy as that baby-chucking trebuchet.

Whitey!

Kudos, Californistan.

La dernière semaine, I was rightly disappointed in my hometown. Now, I'm rightly *chortle* disappointed in suburban cracker mob protestarianism. All this throwing cash at diseased lawnsitters and faxing nooses to congressfuckers is no doubt a good time, but the cutting of a gas line produced a Darwin Award-worthy end for not even one yokel.



C'mon, something equally rich in schadenfreude or don't be calling yourselves revolutionaries any longer. You all diddle around as much as a Catholic priest. Bloody cowards.

Testing...one...two...zzzzzzz

Hey, what smells like smoke?
Is this thing on?
Do I care?
Not really?
Am I sure?
That's it?







Apparently, the land of tea and crumpets isn't thinking of the children.

A recall? Oh well, time to break out the big boy.














Sometimes quantity really is better than quality.

Flashing king snake

My brain may have slowed to a crawl, but it's mobile enough to flash the goods, though they're not very good goods. But they're free, and that's worth something of value.

He had been told crawling would get him nowhere. Defiant, though not standing, he crawled. Across the Mississippi he crawled, across the Huey P. Long. Into the Great Plains he crawled, and through the dust and devolution of Texas and the New Mexican plateau. The ticket taker at the International UFO Museum and Research Center considered him mad, but he was a paying customer and all paying customers in Roswell were mad and thus he was allowed to crawl inside and out. The gift shop, however, was quite the frustrating experience, though he did manage to score a plush grey for his on-again, off-again girlfriend, so perilously close to off because of his determination to be the next world traveling oddity of Ripley's, believe it or not.

Making his case at the San Francisco branch, he was laughed off the premises and crawled onto a trawler about to head out for sturgeon. Ignoring the surgeon general's warning, he lit a Winston and bought off the skipper with a few packs, even proving his worth as a makeshift counterweight in the fight to lift those feisty fish on board.

With the thanks of captain and crew, and a delicious meal to boot, he crawled on shore, sneaking his way, via Solid Snake-inspired crawling (sadly, without a cardboard box) onto a cargo ship bound for mainland China. The hold held many goods, though he was not able to read Chinese. The vast, floating warehouse could have contained the bodies of Triad victims for all he knew. Since a noxious stench never appeared, he understood that whatever illegal shenanigans were likely going on, at least he wouldn't pass out from the fumes.

The astute reader will no doubt be wondering how he survived such an arduous trek across the unforgiving seas.

Rats are tastier than you think.

Disembarking in Shanghai, there was -- surprise! -- no sight of Madonna as he crawled the famous burg, deftly avoiding rickshaws, gunplay in the muddy streets, roving bands of angry Maoists, patrons stumbling out of opium dens, scattered ronin from across the Nihonkai here for a quick score and other Oriental stereotypes as he steadily made his way into and across the vast, agricultural interior and north to his ultimate destination, leaping (crawling, actually) greatly forward into the realm of the horse lords where he continued to crawl.

And crawl.

And crawl.

And crawl, the thickening callouses upon his hands and those straining his tender knee joints furiously weaving burrow after burrow into the ancient earth, uncovering a long-dried riverbed over which he crawled and crawled and crawled and then crawled one more time, a thin, reddish trail in the sandy silt howling that he had at last found his treasure of iron and bone, the grave of the great Khan himself.

As his ex, and the world soon found out, crawling took him everywhere, including the pages of National Geographic and everyone knows where that inevitably leads: hookers n' blow n' crawling, lots of crawling.

Burnt Offerings, Or, The Customer Is Always An Idiot

I'm not sure whether this corpse is me suffering from bloggy burnout or one of those patrons who, like clockwork, when picking up their book orders feel it very vital and important and necessary to both national security and our symbiotic emotional well-being 'cause we're all in this together person whom I won't see again until you return your books late and then never again because you're off to your cubicle, stuffs the immediate vicinity with a hot, stifling air of why they ordered these particular tomes and what their research entails thus forcing my hand into dousing them with lighter fluid, striking a match and giving them the reverse monk protest because, shockingly, gasp, I don't care.

















That's what you get for not taking your books and going.

I hope someone remembered the hot dogs and marshmallows.

To write among strangers

Funny how five minutes contains years. Time to follow the crown.

Extremely important employment-related paradigm shifting

Magical ball-control ray. Not pictured: Doug Henning.

Doug Henning would be proud of such prestidigitation.

Just get some of that Canucklehead curl, then hat tricks aplenty.

Oh, almost forgot about basketballery:
Kentucky waxes Fucking Duke, Kansas outlasts, oh, why not, Butler (go, midmajors, go), then a collection of talent beats John Wall.

Before I take leave of thee, I'm currently in a library-wide meeting (one must take advantage of a student body-less spring break) but if you are interested in the nuts and bolts of a well-oiled book depository, and I know you are, simply watch the live feed below.

Cleveland, I'm very disappointed in you.

An entire 6:15 am bus ride downtown and not a single inebriated wanker? At least the parade doesn't run down Euclid so I'll be able to have a quiet lunch in vomit-free sneakers. Fuck drunk cracker mobs.

In other predictable news, Justice Department claims "my penis is bigger than your penis." Texas Representative says "no way." Justice Department says "way." Our reporter could neither confirm nor deny whether either party in fact whipped it out.

Editorial: in their defense, it wasn't yet St. Patrick's Day.

The drowning flash

No guns or knives? What kind of story is that!

A kiss as sweet as a blowtorch. A touch as gentle as an acid trip. Burning sensations and hyperbolic hues are lovely, if rare, blooms we deign to pluck out of a wasteland of dull aches and infinite shades of matte grey. Those interior states always remain after such transient perfumes scatter at postmodern speed.

Finding one at all, now there's the rub of steel wool, the same color as the pavement saturated with witching hour rain, perforated by neon shards and blood quickly sheathed by a fresh splash.

Watch your step, you tell yourself, or you'll drown.

Turn your head and imbibe the first act of a thousand simultaneous plays staged in a gilded glass cabinet, another thousand each and every block. These actors and actresses, having rehearsed their lines to the point of nausea, restart their wandering through that greasepainted matte grey, warding off those dull aches with loose cravats and spirited abandon until the inevitable awareness that they failed to garner applause once more and so venture forth into the witching hour rain.

Watch your step, they tell themselves, or you'll drown.

Slipping around a streetlight's oval glow, you stalk past carnival minuets and shadow puppet theatres left in the dark, a solitary blossom caught in a flurry of breakdown. Though how long the former will last, you know all too well. They'll find out in a whirlwind, a rushing, redolent scent soon stale. You laugh, for a moment.

Then, as the others, venture forth nonetheless, infused with unspoken promises borne on that hallucinatory soupçon, the tableaux of her abstract, arcane hydrocarbons demanding that we heed her one and only command, that we search for a touch as gentle, a kiss as sweet.

We didn't watch our step, and we drowned.

Don't fuck with the library

You think I'm joking? Pshaw!

Since I'm not entirely sure today's young people are familiar with dark age weaponry, I could really use one of those Snake Plissken EMP dealies. Try remaining oblivious to your excuses now, muahahahaha, etc.

It's magic!

You have journeyed far to reach this wonderland of tomes and microfiche so lo when you arrive at the grand entrance of automatic doors and it doesn't automatically open after you have stood there motionless for fifteen seconds or more while carefully sculpting your righteous indignation face that would impress Donatello you have obviously failed to give the proper address of 'open sesame' but rest easy for after you do the automatic door will automatically open automatically don't worry about those goofy handles trust me you silly goose.

No time for blog, Dr. Jones!

Short Round lies, I've got plenty of time (I am, after all, at work, assonance, sweet assonance, gas, grass, ass, the last aw yeah) I simply don't feel like it. Which makes me a liar because here I am with a post but know this post knows nothing and contains nothing but arsenic, so after you've read it, you don't have long, which makes you dead, an ontological state worse than lying personified, advantage, me, whee.

It's Crappy Blog, it's Crappy Blog, it's fun, it's a wonderful toy. It's fun for a girl or a boy.

When baked hungover struggling without repose against the nefarious forces of destiny whose unholy web of deceit, this tangible darkness, has been carefully woven over countless eons for the sole purpose of enacting my demise stricken with slack, I, of course, seek out that oracle which cannot possibly let me down, Crappy Blog® post template 2.0.

No dice, but my desk does hold a deck of cards.

Hey, can't surf for porn all day.

Ten of diamonds? Wikipedia it is.

241 BC: First Punic War: Battle of the Aegates Islands. The Romans sink the Carthaginian fleet bringing the First Punic War to an end. Epic.

1735: An agreement between Nadir Shah and Russia is signed near Ganja and Russian troops are withdrawn from Baku. Insert own marijuana joke here.

famous birthdays: Osama bin Laden, Chuck Norris. Insert own the former needs airplanes to take down buildings whereas the latter only needs his fist joke here.














Hopping like a frog never works, trust me.

I distinctly recall as a wee NES adolescent being involved in nearly a carbon copy of this fantastic goal during a snowy November day in Oberlin. Before you inquire, yes, I was one of the defenders. Sure, the dude scored, but I did manage to get a sharp shot on his shin later in the match. Dishes out for revenge, etc, etc.

Would've had video, but UEFA's as hardcore as George Lucas.

What are you looking at, grasshopper?

If there was a street named Fascination,
oh, you'd be it. Oh, see you've already plugged it.
Fucker.
Oh!
In other shocking bits, LeBron is bloody good hurt,
sniff & sob,
I enjoy a scoop & a gob or three
of Neapolitan & syrupy chocolate
mixed, 'tis alchemical,
though I've never been to Londontown nor Naples
nor any alembic in Bruno's Kingdom.
Heretic, watch out for ouches,
fare thee well & beware, even the pitch isn't safe
from kung fu masters --
burn 'em at the stake! too! if you can catch as catch can
catch, woodchuckling fool, unless you've been kung fued, too.
I had a bunch of other crap, cut
& pasted into the trash, you didn't need to read that.

Flash over, man, flash over!

How do you get out of this chickenshit outfit? Why, by participating in this week's Friday Flash Fiction, of course.

I/He/She/It/They/(place name here) had to kick out the back window to escape. The ravenous Wade Davises were approaching a smidgen too quick for such fidgety, shambling mounds of quivering rot and I/He/She/It/They/(we don't need no stinkin' names) found out with a terrifying, near-fatal speed that a factory-manufactured shell bursting with charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate, even if such a concoction were to be fired directly into the cranial cavity point blank, was about as effective as poking a rabid bear with a used toothpick.

"Fucking watch it," screamed He.

"Hey man, I just scraped my arm, not sliced the fucker open on the glass. Why dontcha get after She's case. She's the one who's bleeding over It."

"Shut the hell up," said They, each carefully pronounced syllable descending in volume. "Got it? Good. Now, I, take point. She and He back --"

"Take point," I questioned. "What are ya, a punk ass kid in your parents' basement watching Aliens on mute n' repeat, stuffing your face full of chips n' soda, greasy mitts all over a stereo and a mixtape pile, the intermezzo to SI swimsuit issue spanking?"

"That's quite a diatribe, speak from experience," She deadpanned. He looked with incredulity as It tapped I on the shoulder.

"Look, man, get with it. Scared? You bet. She, He, They, and myself, none of us are alone, but unless some banding together happens, brotherly and shit, it's Hudson all over again and that means Game Over."

"Fucking hell, fuck you motherfuckers. I am not going to play some fucking B-movie shit and hole up like some fucking pussy! I say fuck those monsters, fuck 'em good, we've got enough fucking shells, don't need a goddamn headshot, just blow 'em to bits like fucking Robocop, remember that sh --"

The first time one sees -- hears -- decaying human teeth bite down with enough pressure to slough off their instantaneous crumble and break completely through a skull into the brain, matter and crunch and juices and gore soaking an already-filthy dress shirt, crumpled tie and the grey, disheveled grasses of an early spring, well, it's a sensory experience not easily forgotten.

I simply didn't know when to keep quiet.

If you're gonna go, go whole hog

I'm on the other side of the globe from surprised (and it's a bit moist, hey, look, I think that's Australia otherwise how else do you explain the bikini-clad Elle Macpherson hallucination, Coleridge) at this wholly expected development, as you certainly ought to be, just make sure you're donning a fetching dayglo orange life preserver, but please don't permit this

The review of where and how to hold a Sept. 11 trial is not over, so no recommendation is yet before the president and Obama has not made a determination of his own, officials said. The review is not likely to be finished this week.

to turn into one more wasted opportunity. Friends! Romans! Assholes! For this is nothing but what we choose make of it -- can't you hear those freedom bells a-ringing? -- the perfect occasion for doing what we Americans do best.

Making money off of something!

So kindly shut your fucking pieholes, Peter King (no, the other crappy Peter King) and Miss Lindsey and Anthony Romero, Professional Commissar, stuff your respective pleas for righteous Christian slaughter and patchouli terrorist sympathizing, for we know what this great electorate wants, nay, needs, and all for the low, low price of $59.95! Order using your remote!

In this corner, upholding the great Islamic tradition of wrestlers past,

Khalid!

Sheik!

Mohammed!




















And in this corner, fresh from a domestic beatdown, defending Manifest Destiny, fluffy little bunnies and ostentatious, histrionic glam,

the Nature Boy!

Ric!

Flair!























WOO!

LET'S GET READY TO LAWYER!*

*with fisticuffs, in case I wasn't clear.

JUST ANNOUNCED! VERY SPECIAL GUEST REFEREE!

Fourth quartet

Given the intricate intertext that I've subtly woven not once, not twice but thrice, I shall gift thee a chance to play catch-up as catch can. Caught up? Splendid. Tune in next paragraph and subsequent ones for the exciting conclusion to Being the Continuing Continued Adventures of Leon Czolgosz, Irishman.

The turgid roar of unseen turboprops cut through the night, as dark and stormy as the last, yet now distended with the shellshock of Gatling gunned thunderbolts flashing a glance at the steel speeding out of earshot. To the layman, they were simply airplanes. To this Irish agent, the unmistakable whine of political hubris. To this Irish agent lost in the Kingdom, and lost he was, so far off his Occidental mission that he might as well have been working for the Khanate of Cathay. Crouching underneath a precipitation-plundered plum tree, Leon lifted his faux-leather bomber over his head, sculpting just enough dry space to espy the daguerreotype suggestively slipped into his pocket by those ruby-tipped fingers.

"Yeesh, what an ugly motherfucker." Locating this unseemly contact, the one who would ostensibly be able to answer all of his questions -- or so that supposed Daughter of a Bohemian Yugoslav said -- this hideous love child of a leprosy-stricken Liszt and John Merrick, was going to prove easier done than said.

Reaching the covered gate of the castle compound hiding cozily underneath the skirt of Belgrade, Leon hid his faux-leather bomber in the bushy, roadside mud to reveal a suit whose swank would have impressed the son of Beau Brummel if there was still such a creature but we all sadly remember his state funeral on radio, and popped a Winston-Salem, taking a cool drag that fooled the guard just enough to gain him entry.

Wading neck-deep through black tie, black dress, black caviar and, eerily, row after circle after rhombus of too-white teeth, he slowly ascended the gently curving Cararra marble staircase with a velvety élan, instantly recalling his voluptuous captor who, even at distance, cast a smoothly electric gaze that all but erased this too-beautiful crowd, a lush, gaslit hum illuminating -- ah, there, in the northeast corner amidst the murk, his homely quarry.

"Yeesh, what an ugly motherfucker."

"Monsieur?"

"Get gone, garçon," retorted the determined Dubliner as he quickly snatched a snifter of champagne, copped a canape and descended, all in one fell swoop. Sweeping across the parquet, he made an A-line for the hideous monstrosity, none other than the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Forcibly welling up every wellspring of willpower, Leon gently but firmly and most importantly, revoltingly, clutched the Minister's upper limb.

"Ministru, aş dori o vorbă cu tine, te rog."

His eyes instantly glazed over as if someone had poured sugar on them and deftly applied a low flame, for he, like all provincial Yankee double agents, knew no second language.

"Eu spun, domnule ministru, aţi --"

In a continent of shock, Leon stumbled backwards, only a tapestry-laden column keeping him upright until he eventually slumped down in a heap resembling a scorched pile of Hamburger Helper. Futilely gasping for air, a long shadow pierced his personal space, becoming ever darker as the ample assets of the girl with the coffin curl came into view, a ruby-nailed digit flipping his upper lip as her neon-green eyes permeated his every sweaty thought.

"Just as I suspected. No one dare speak the language of the Empire in public save an adult film industry defector -- or the enemy."

"Vai!"

"Oh, my dear, dear Paddy. 'tis a shame you won't have time to get used to those pearly fangs. Someday, I might even have let you take a drink of me," she said, scraping the drop of scarlet beading down his chin, the ruby nail taken hungrily into her mouth.

"Dar de ce?"

"The kingdom's loins needed girding, darling, and you're the grease for the gears of war. Officer, in the name of his Imperial Majesty, arrest this Transylvanian vampire."

As the Yugoslavs roughly dragged him away, Leon cursed the day he learned to play whist.

Chicks. Oh,

fin.

A post must be like the world. It must contain everything.

Everything? Fuck that.

Prelude: Processing periodicals yesterday afternoon (no faun sightings), I arrived at the latest issue of Gramophone, the cover story being that of the man whose quote I cleverly altered above. And being the kind-hearted bloke that I am, for your pleasure, in lieu of more pointless and nonsensical bullshit, here's some of the man's work.



Ha ha, fooled you!

Oh, alright, here, you salivating dogs.



Ha ha encore. Gotta pay the bills. The world ain't cheap.



No complaining that it's too long, you attention-deficit wankers.

There's always an upside

To depression? Duh. Except for, you know, those ubiquitous potential sources that actually stunt creation: work, school, home, the rest of you jerkoffs and a bunch of other junk that must remain secret for reasons of national security.

"Wow, that's, like, everything."

Like, I know, like, you know? Sorry, was busy assisting the future leaders of, like, America this morning. It's the seventh week of the semester and you don't know the name of your professor, your class, the class number, the textbook or any combination of the previous?

Stop it.
Stop it.
Stop it.
Stop it.

Of course, all this theorizing and rampant psychological speculation is rendered meaningless the second (if if if) LeBron says au revoir, suckers. Number one miserable city? Try negative one, or two or even *gasp* negative i.

What do I do? I don't know. Is there anyone who knows?



You'll pay, don't think you won't pay.