Thirty days of suck XVI: not in public, cheeky bastard

Wheelie Bus wait, deliberate movement.
Thus, long exposure? Not so much.*

*that means I cheated via shaking the thing

What is it? 
It's it, the gods striking.
Why? 
I haven't versed in nearly a month.
What of that one?
Thumb thumb thumb. In class?
That.
Oh. That. The muses pulling up anchor in disgust, 'tis.

Tomorrow, that's called technology.

Thirty days of suck XV: but you love silhouette night

Supposing I could have, should have, fabricated my own silhouette out of the skeletal remains piled in the basement & a torch, but then how huh? would have been the inevitable bitching about the episode from which the below finds its origin story, the distant early warning of the beginning of the zombification of The Simpsons. All one needs is the first ten, none of that base six crap.

Tomorrow, indecently long exposure, officially, but since my camera comes from the Quick Stop, you'll get whatever I damn well post, hate like it, & be glad it's not you-know-what.

Thirty days of suck XIV: look at the world with an evil eye

Frankly, I nearly forgot; a silent gloom saved the hour.

That blue, neither my eye nor my skin, too.

Tomorrow, man of shadow.

Thirty days of suck XIII: thirteen is the loneliest number that you'll ever do

Being male, an American, married with children, & with nearly four decades of living existence under his belt, I've got enough crap to choose thirteen things from. As usual, I try & hide the fugly for not just my benefit, but yours. Being the Chuck Mosley of the Towering Slab, I care a lot.

So, after threatening to steal homie's sunset, I contemplated the ramifications of such a crime against the fabric of society or something, & stole an idea instead.

From the top of the mountain of paradise to the deepest circle of hell, stuff I dig with a muchness,

one & two, Lord & Master of HPL scholarship S.T. Joshi's two-volume final word, barring a Shadow Out of Time-style interloper, on the high priest of squishy cosmic indifference.

three, the newest volume of The Blizzard, the quarterly footie mag, edited by

four, the writer of this book, the bible of tactics porn, Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson.

five, an infamous tome, criticized for being overly sensationalist, most notably by disciples of Varg, or fans of balance, I suppose (true, at times), but hey, when you take two of my favorite things, metal & weird, & toss 'em in a bubbly cauldron of evil fuckery, I'm so there.

six, a lovely, lovely book, Rohan Kriwaczek's deadpan An Incomplete History of The Art of Funerary Violin. Enchanting, thorough (musical examples included) & one-hundred percent fictional.

seven, Big Edgar.

eight, The Decadent Reader, edited by Asti Hustvedt, a collection of bonkers French aesthete-writers, the nineteenth century equivalent of scholar-athletes, minus the hand-wringing capitalist exploitation.

nine, a flâneur's handbook.

ten, John Donne's The Complete English Poems.

eleven, an imaginary place that, if the cosmos weren't so indifferent, would totally exist, at least as a theme park with rides, souvenir t-shirts, & spicy human dogs.

twelve, ♪ my love for you is like a truck, berserker ♫

thirteen, damn, that's grainy. 'tis The Annotated Alice.
Don't believe me? Down the rabbit hole with yours truly.


Tomorrow, the eyes have it.

Thirty days of suck XII: all the weirdos come out at night

Which is why, as a sun-worshiping non-weirdo, I tend to avoid not just evening itself, but its onset, this great deceiver (twilight, not me, I would never deceive, inveigle, or obfuscate) flaunting its quiver of hues before firing, piercing our heart, leaving us easy pickings for the vampires, junkies, & freaks.

Since the Great Migration of 2010, I've been witness to a fair amount of spectacular sunsets that put the above to shame. If only Krampus would gift me a swanky camera. I've been real almost-good at least 37% of the time.

No, that's not an allegory for Clevelandia sports.
The sun tried to rise long ago, but Helios fumbled.

Tomorrow, get lucky.

Catharsis

All art is all the same, in this way: once you've been exposed, you've got an opinion on it. True neutrality exists only in D&D. Thus, an editor's note: the photos below are either a masterful use of a point-&-click best suited for natural light closeups, the harsh, hard clarity of the everyday filtered out so the savage beast is better soothed through an audio-visual magic, or, the work of someone who has no clue what the fuck he's doing.

 

Moot, since things said, unsaid, things done, undone, the constant maelstrom of each playing off the other both here & here, you can't see but you know where I'm pointing, came rushing back the moment the last chord slipped away into a greasy haze of cheer, beer, sweat & damnable thoughts that I'm childishly grateful I can't kill. But for two hours, consternation, I saw you drown, & I was right into the bliss. 

Merci, gents.

Katatonia @ Peabody's: Dispossession, Chrome, We Must Bury You, Teargas, I Transpire, Tonight's Music, Clean Today, The Future of Speech, Passing Bird, Sweet Nurse, Don't Tell A Soul, For My Demons, Nephilim, My Twin, Wait Outside, The Longest Year, I Break, July, Without God, Murder, Dissolving Bonds, Forsaker.

Thirty days of suck XI: blue moon

I hadn't begun to compose the usual textual banality, oft sprinkled with inside jokes, esoterica, &/or cryptography unassailable due to not ever having sent out decoder rings to thee, because I'm not that stupid, gentle readership. Fuck, I hadn't even chosen a picture, & that's the easiest way to do these things, do anything, pick the art, & let it work its magic. Then I considered homie's query: what do you think, what do you feel when you see blue?

What shade of blue,
how much of it,
when do I see it,
where,
with whom,
with no one,
why?

'tis old glass found in a borrowed book & just look at that blue.

[ed. note: all right, artificial light's much too bright, but trust, blue's outta sight] 

Now I can respond, with perfect, cloudless, chart-every-star-in-Orion evening sky clarity, & if you think I am going to, you're fucking crazy. I almost feel bad for the pages that have to bear the answer's directionless, self-absorbed, adolescent ink.

Almost.

Thirty days of suck X: misty cosmic candy memories

When not falling into alligator-infested pits, commanding choppers, cracking whips on Dracula's skull, performing not one not two but three Italian Jobs, or kicking shins back on planet earth (if I had been familiar with Dirty Leeds back then, I would have confirmed that that description may have contained a grain of accuracy), we geeks, being geeks & therefore unfamiliar with the ladies you millennials have no idea how good you've got it, rolled multi-sided bones with gusto.

I was playing first edition before you were born.

Basement chez Randal.

The obvious dungeon crawl classics remain so to this day, & since our gang, thankfully, shunned Monty Haul campaigns, the weird & the wacky were the order of the day, thus --

-- this guy's two-volume take on Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's most famous of works, Dungeonland & Land Beyond the Magic Mirror. Though comical, & disturbingly merciless if your DM was a budding psychopath which I wasn't, I decided to grab the nearest copy of Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice & spruced it up, perhaps even cedar, or cider or beer or something.

Why didn't I snap the covers? Mad as a hatter, s'pose.

If you worked here, you'd be in an asylum by now.

Not the Viscountess. Probably. Maybe.

It's TuLGey. This makes me so frumious.

This guy, too.

Clearly an impostor or Billy Bremner.
The real Duchess is real s-m-r-t & not so short.

Can't recall which module this comes from, but you see the dilemma I'm in.
Natural twenty, natural twenty, why hast thou forsaken me?

Tomorrow, something blue, perhaps borrowed, likely old.

Intermezzo

Darkthroning is good for the soul. Laughter is for weirdos. 

Once little plastic evergreens were eagles.

Where the Space Casino will dump deadbeats.

Competing with the shoe store in Guinness's longest abandonment.

All glory to the Hypnotoad.

Or this one.

How can I not smoke if you won't let me in?

For my safety, I'm sure.

Let it be said that our corruption is nothing if not professional.

Spooky noochies.

Probably toxic.

Someone needs to grow up.

When guns are outlawed, I guess it's rock-paper-scissors.

Oh, grate.

To not just yours, but everyone's mother.

Where no one could hear, dumbass.

Not these shitty photos, that's for sure.

Check.

And mate.