Helen Lovejoy approves this message

Only a dumbass wouldn't check out this merry cavalcade of acid straunge.

Moar ye olde scole, now wt monstres

This is just flat out cool. Gashadokuro needs to be on a t-shirt, play sweeper [ed. note: difficult to score sans head, natch], & take my place as Saturday overlord.

Berserker sleep now

The Duchess posts the sacred, yours truly posts the profane.

♪ MY LOVE FOR YOU IS LIKE A TRUCK BERSERKER
WOULD YOU LIKE TO CLANK THAT MONK BERSERKER ♫

Lulled to calm, propulsive waves wash in, tossed & crashing like a longship in the North Sea, good times. Though what a misleading title, I'm just a mellow cat who longs to zone out, zapped with a zzzz IV.

Variations on one theme this is, yabba dabba's doo doo, but you know what the agitprop office says, loose lips sink guided missile cruisers.

On the other hand, Pooty's ex-Puppet's livejournaling, on the dismembered hand, Pooty's KGB Tales is invite only.

Zombie Proust cries at such weak paragraphing.

Do zombies dream of electric tears, or just chomp chomp chomp?

Ponder this string of developments I must; being dumb, one at a time.

Mind meld

Now that yours antisocial has met a local blogger other than the Duchess who doesn't exactly count being a fellow inmate at the Towering Slab, interwebs greetings, scourge of dandelions, I feel all bright young thingy. Here's where Jake would say ewww, but thankfully Space Casino scoffing is more universal than I previously dreamed of. Sometimes I love you, stupid burg.

Zombie third-rate grunge lives.
Nothing personal, guys, but T-virus vaccine, stat.

Sucker bet, n. that the shine will wear off sooner rather than later.

Because I'm awful, you can't tell the signage says Filming In Progress. For flicks more thrilling than either that or this, come back for the late show wink nudge.

Okay, lead the way --

to mold --

& smokes? At least I don't feel ripped off.

Message in a bottle

Jinn, like graffiti & jaywalking in front of the Space Casino, kills.

+1 for olde schule geekery. Oui, I can reward myself. I'm a loner, Dottie, a rebel. By the way, you, the reader, suck. Don't worry, so do we though the other half of Local no. 13 less so, me gumming up a personal cost-benefit analysis with fewer thoughts on Important stuff & more on verse-y I-stuff, though Important stuff bleeds through, how can it not. Apropos that oxidized blood is the color of rust 'cause all the waste twixt the lands of a completed piece you see where I'm going with this. Ruin porn ain't just for shooting rubble. Fucking hangovers, & that ain't all of the ubiquitous it. Don't be daft, surface phenomena.

Façon de parler

O Lord, suffrin' poster's block
duh duh duh DUH
Oughta see the runnin' snot
duh duh duh DUH
Kiddin' kiddin' I swear, or not
duh duh duh DUH
Got me the this doggerel's better than what I pen & that makes me so lonesome I could cry lugubrious tears of heartsick sad bereavement ja wohl bluuuuuues

Stricken with flabbergast about being reduced to The Human Decoder Ring -- FYI homie, words hurt -- but if you don't check out the writing swankier & on a grander vista than you'll ever find here [ed. note: neither just sports nor death metal] at the Duchess's fresh crib (do The Kids still say crib, or has pad returned the real retro, Daddy-O?), heathens, 'tis thirty days of just sports & death metal.

Stabbed in the hart

Since someone beat me to today's Rant, Being the Epilogue to a Selection from yesterday's Careful Hints, increasingly rare in the midst of this dump's inexorable photographic cavalcade (you're welcome, by the way), & said it swankier than I would have, duh, sever your technocratized brain for a slip of a moment & imagine the very top of Yggdrasil. If those branches are shaking, you know what's begun way down here in Midgard.

 


Hold on, buckaroos, prepare to lose, & watch out for cat vomit.

Fine, I'll slack at work instead & how is that any different from any other day I'll let you decide

So that's why all the viking kids grew up to rape & pillage.

As the young people say (did say? I don't know, Daddy-O, hey hey you you get off of my cloud), word. Oh, mucho thanko to a certain ethnic plumber broadcaster for darkthroning on the radio this crisp morn & if I was an ultra jerk instead of a part-time jerk, I would've put it on speaker for all the public transportationistas to enjoy.

Look man, I better use up some of this vacation before it's outlawed & you know what they say about outlaws. Printemps break falls within a serendipitous collection of works (creating's the real work, motherfuckers & the stuff I've got for swanky zine action, shudder, I suck & unofficial deadlines are made to be horribly axe-murdered, no?) & days, a Michael Stanley double shot of Champions League action & public drunken bunga bunga avoidance. Kill two crows with one well-placed potato gun shot, wee lasses & lads, I'll drink to that.

[ed. note: for your edification, the Undisclosed Location has been disclosed. Sloppy, CheneyBot, sloppy.]

A Vapid Poetics of Votology & Other Stories

Monstrosities like this rear their collective uglies on this campus as well, every two years, like diabolical stop-motion clockwork.
















American foreign policy?

The ballot box crap, not the photo. That ugly gets a pretty smile.

Speaking of pretty, Jennifer Hetrick in an episode of TNG. WMDest MacGuffin ever aside -- that's no Star Destroyer, that's a STAR DESTROYER -- am I, as I seem to be going by conversations over the years, in the minority in digging Captain's Holiday a lot? Man, that was two decades ago. I'm old.















Speaking of old, I feel extra today on the account of Doodily, Unplanned Offspring #1, achieving the age where she is legally permitted to write in Snoopy or Woodstock or Dick Nixon or Dead Gus Hall on said ballot box crap. A cynical chip off the decrepit block. I'm so proud of her, sniff.

Who what where when why, and how.

Yesterday, I received via email -- O cold, postmodern disconnect, thou maketh me tear at my breast! -- my first officially official rejection, merci, magazine that dare not speak its name. Putting aside for a moment any humorless jocularity about now qualifying for starving artist assistance, 'twas a series of strange sensations pinballing in the caverns of my skull.

To begin, beneath the loamy verse: how I view my stuff. A beacon of cringe, so why submit in the first place? (Various & sundry humans -- yes, I know two or three -- encouraged this tiny lark to grow into a carrion-chomping vulture, but all failure, as it were, falls decidedly on these shoulders.)

Few have seen few, even fewer have been posted, some have professed enjoyment, others remained politely quiet, though one person did in fact pelt my house, not with rotten vegetables, but slugs from a twelve-gauge. We all can't be Super Franzen Up Up And Away, bub.

So again I (& other equally strange beings, it seems) query all you excellent-to-awful people, why submit, why reveal snapshots poorly (though valiantly) composed to those who, in this particular case, aren't the subject of the work? If I may be permitted to wax rhetorical, is not the craving for recognition innate in all of us? To take one extreme(ly obvious) example, nihilists don't blog since they're busy foraging for roots & screaming at the stars, I blog, you blog, everybody blog thus evidemment we want someone to glance at our something, even if they're not reading us -- save the parsing for I'm aware that a familiarity coupled with close readings of non-confessional texts can glean kernels thought cleverly hidden by the author.

The desire for validation -- or, if so inclined, Validation (or having something important to say or respect or appreciation or communion with fellow travelers or whatever synonym you prefer) -- is that not a passing fancy but something worse, a weakness, especially disturbing at the feet of the self-appointed gatekeepers of culture; Jack Poet & Jill Novelist are in print, so that's what I want, of course of course, horse? One rejection from one (or more, I've no clue) reader doesn't change that; the universal arbiter of taste is fickle for if she wasn't, you'd all be midnight headphoning Opeth just like me, goddamn cretins.

To step further in this garbled incoherence, can this quest -- and here I, for the sake of argument, set aside the notion of pure art for art's sake 'cause I know that's a whole other wormy can but this sentence is already beguiling accepted syntax so let's save that cataclysm for tomorrow -- be classified as a temporary bout of hubris; on my part for saying you should pay attention, or on theirs hell no we chose to dismiss this tripe, now who's the cretin, hardee har har.

In today's magical, Jetsonian world, there's a neo-egalitarian internets at a chunk of the planet's fingertips where the amount of time & care (often sizable) poured into the mold of a single piece can be (fleetingly) experienced, even if it harbors distinct artistic limitations & believe me, I'm well aware of mine as the degraded, plastic facsimile of long-rotted Romanticism. Different language & approach, but all the salient, tired elements are present, variation on the same clutch of personal themes orbiting the same handful of people & past scenarios every. single. time be electronically damned. Hell, (relatively) cheap self-publishing is readily available for the old school bookworm if fabulous web pages ain't your gig though, in either case, be wary of the omnipresent monster lurking on the periphery ready to bite your goddamn head off:

[N]ow he was being asked to take into account the potential effect of his writing on a completely anonymous readership. This effect, moreover, was not only impossible to control but also irreversible. Once something is printed, it is out of the author's hands for good, no matter how strong his will to perfection. -- p. 95-96, Kafka: The Decisive Years by Reiner Stach.

Fucking yikes & amen.

Writers, poets, painters, musicians; deeply skilled, hardworking artisans or drunken sub-amateur scribblers, we're going to imagine regardless & since I, or anyone I know, isn't sailing their economic boat upon the creative sea, we are so s-m-r-t, why seek [insert euphemism for validation here] at all? One too many, I guess. At least it didn't cost a dime.

Why do you think we had a revolution?

A certain furriner (oh, did you all forget that America Land of the Consumer and Home of the Bedwetter owns the internets, too?*) penned typed this acid diatribe yesterday:

If you can write 500 or 1000 words on your blogs telling readers that you can't do this and you can't do that, surely you can turn those words into your ideas.

Okay, smart guy, you're on.















USA 2, British Isles 0, 3-0 if you count this.




















We're number one! (in debt. Wars ain't cheap.)

*technically, China probably does, but why quibble over details

Tuesdays of Terror!

Once upon a Tuesday dreary, while I slackened, slumped and lazy,
Over many a bland and ever-growing mound of forgotten work --
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping like a fucking jerk.
"'Tis some coworker" I muttered, "rapping like a fucking jerk --
Only this, gosh, what a berk."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak October,
Hanging up the Sandman gift from her, the Sandman, do not scoff!
Eagerly I wished retraction;-- once I had sought condemnation
For missed prestidigitation -- sorrow for the lost Day Off --
For the rare and radiant Sunday whom the angels name Day Off --
What else rhymes? Hack, wheeze and cough.

[a bunch of stanzas I'm not Weird Al enough to successfully parody
so just enjoy the big finish, thanks]

And the Sandman, never falling, still is hanging, still is hanging
From the dusty desk of yours truly above tasks that do bore.
And his eyes have all the seeming of a writer's that is scheming --
Dammit, almost knocked my coffee streaming caffeine on the floor;
Yet my soul from out this shadow some call work, I, darkest chore,
Shall be lifted -- nevermore!

The Frightener

I had planned on skipping work to attend the local 9/12 Taxes Are For Socialist Reds/Killing An Arab/White Power/Mispeled Postur/Make Baby Beck Cry rally*, but the Merry Old Land of Nod remained naught but a faraway illusion last night and now my skull, full of icky consciousness, is screaming in silent terror, all thanks to a certain person who shall remain nameless for her own protection not from my inaudible yet righteous scowling clear across the continent which, though considered quite formidable in most circles, is mere fluffy bunny child's play compared to this black pit of blasphemous horror, but from this black pit of blasphemous horror, so utterly blasphemous and horrible, it should be said twice, which it was, nearly thrice, as it were, so good on me:

Every time I see Kissinger I think of what I heard Mami VanDoren say about him. Supposedly he wore stinky and holey socks to bed. The mental image of Kissinger naked with foul socks is enough to make me wish you had a picture of Chimpy and his pet goat.

Wow. What did I ever do to you?
















"Two hundred an hour for two girls is the most I'll pay. What's that? Oh no, that is acceptable. I've got a pocket full of napalm and I'm not afraid to use it."**

*Did you see how I posted this at 9:12 on 9/12? Solidarność!***
**Pretend you can hear my bad Kissinger accent. Merci.***
***Let these foreign words be a warning, patriots! Ever vigilant!

The Sporting Life (yes, this post contains more sports you whiny wankers)

Delaying the inevitable bombast of simmering disappointment, or the start of a tastelicious comeback worthy of saucy thick beef stew and fresh blueberry muffins with a laudanum chaser? Fuck if I know.















Detroit vs. Pittsburgh: one team is beat up and injured -- which is akin to saying one is [insert famous windbag of your choice] and stupid, thus apologies for the repetition -- and will likely be missing key guys; the other has the two best players on the planet still on skates instead of wasting precious time doing something pointless and boring such as that game of skill which is not a sport at all, just like darts, which isn't a sport either dammit but is enjoyable unlike the aforementioned but unnamed game of skill but not a sport known to the washed and well-coiffed cracker masses as golf. Of course, the Red Wings could conjure up some 60s old man castoff Maple Leaf in like flinty übergrit and pull it off, but the odds are likely going to die. Penguins in six.












Speaking of über, no poetical panegyric for you since your drunken Blackhawks lost, muahahahaha, etc.

Oh, alright.

Sure, your team is a collective goober
but don't worry, you're still über.

I'm leaving the clowning business to all the other clowns in the clowning business.

Charles, my man, I agree.

Some people are experimenting way too much with clownery.

Return of the living dead

Your plug was pulled by Nora, The Nurse From Hell.

And now...


















A film one million billion quadrillion times worse!



















Nora, The Chef From Hell!

Bam!

Voting, the final, apocalyptic, eschatological, chainsaw and/or butcher knife wielding democratic process of voting, ends April 17th!

Remember, taxes are due on April 15th, so no bloody -- figuratively and/or literally -- excuses, or I'll eat your brains, assuming you have any, which, if you don't vote for Nora, will prove that you certainly do not, and if you certainly do not, I'll torture you with a patented Randal Run-On Sentence® guaranteed to explode the empty cavity where your brain should be but isn't because you're a schmuck, the shards of your rotted skull ripping through your rancid flesh and out into the open air you sick bastard.

Vote or die!

Oh, you have to enter an email address this time, so no stuffing, and I certainly don't condone creating multiple, throwaway free email accounts to compensate for said limitation, certainly.

Vote or die!

If you don't vote, she'll eat your brains.

Or infuse your IV with biological waste.

You thought Dawn of the Dead was scary?

Don't make me post more shots of Babs the Impaler.

And if Nora wins, aside from all the horrific, bloody, glorious terror that victory will bring, just imagine all the weirdos and freaks Bubs could arrest while in Los Angeles. Now that's good readin'!

Plus, FREE booze!

Vote early and often!

"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

"I hate those spammers."

Besides having to deal with punks, troublemakers, n'er-do-wells, never-will-bes and the rambunctious ghost of John Belushi, Dean Wormer is also saddled with the additional



















and not the kind that exotic Hawaiian Monty Python fans enjoy, but stringy, bland dishes cooked up by internets robots grilling in China or swilling in Russia whose culinary power is so effective, we're all but forced to buy things in mass quantities to fund the bulk purchase of WD-40 for said robots. No one wants a squeaky The Google.

Why should you buy things wholesale?
It's the discerning consumer's holy grail,
like a film crew avoiding Christian Bale.
Imagine a surplus stock for your lunch pail,
or when imitating Jesus, an extra nail --
carpentry, sheesh! Don't send me to jail
because of one very important detail
and that is lack of access to email.
Hey, Nigerian riches don't come via snail --
though it would be safer than hunting quail
with you-know-who. Remember that tale?
Wonder what passes for his white whale.
Probably not a gay romp o'er hill and dale,
but lady justice's big ole -- cover those up! -- scale.
One more thing, is it me, or is this bread stale?
That's what I get for buying wholesale.

Going once, going twice, sold to no one!

Scouring the tubes with baking soda and vinegar -- there's quite a lot of filthy, filthy stuff in here -- for something to post about, as I've hit the dreaded stage of posting not out of desire, but because it's expected -- hey, they told me to do it, and if you think I'm going to ignore they, you are mixed nuts -- I decided to follow the diagnosis of my unofficial therapist, Freida of the Bees, PhD in Armchair Psychology, Liberty University '02: she has physiologically and existentially determined that my previous post was a disguised cry for help, a cry to be a virgin once more.

Upon first glance, I vehemently disagreed with her conclusion, but since I don't know the operational and logistical direction of my own brain any better than anyone else --

"Believe me, I don't know, either."

-- I deduced that she could be correct. How the hell would I know? Plus it gave me a post and for that, I am eternally in your debt, Ladye of Texyse, until I pay it off. You want a homemade paper football? People in Texyse like football. It's a law, like posting regularly and using sunscreen.

Anyway, it sounds a horrific proposition on the surface, I know, but in the intervening years, I've picked up a vast reservoir of suave to help guide me along this fresh start, so all I need is for you ladies -- sorry dudes, much appreciated, but it just ain't my gig -- to start the bidding for my deflowering. Hey, the economy sucks, I need loot.

And since this isn't based in anything religious, at least in a godly sort of way, Sunday copulation won't come after Mass, but after football, and once that's done, NBA tripleheaders. Remember, it isn't the deed, but the anticipation. See, waiting a few more hours is extra sexy. God bless godlessness.


















"Oh, Randal, if I got $3.8 million, I'm sure you could get $3.80."

Pot pourri redux

"Dude, I ain't wearing a tux."

















"Hey man, Bee cool and relax to these fine lines."

"Dude, I feel like I've been touched in my special area."

"You know who else got touched in their special area, man?"
















"Dude, I told you, everyone gets horn-y now and again."

"Man, you're gonna get Baby Jesus' goat."


















"Dude, Satan already beat me to it."

"Man, I think you might be seriously fried."

"Not at all dude, but this might be."













"Man, the black hat is on the wrong dude. Oh, acid, make it better. I might even throw a no-hitter!"

"Dude, there's no football this Sunday."













"Too bad for the pope, man, look, he's wide open."

"Here's your chance at rehab, dude."

"Man, I ain't no fuckin' Nazi."

"No, dude, but you've got a lotta problems."