♪ let me help you out of your chair, Cleveland ♫

 
The King is alive, long die the King.

Born in '56, is 56, it's 6/14, 1+4 is 5, that's a heaping firepit of spooky noochies I hope to invoke & give Polska some extra Saturday kielbasa. So many hours of chips, house brand fizz, Unearthed Arcana (d12 HD berserker motherfucker), & solo velocipeding to this epic E-VUL in days of yore when homie Tom K. & His Thrashing Ukulele wasn't trying to sell me on the "qualities" of the Dead Milkmen & Dread Zeppelin fuck that trying-too-hard-to-be-clever college shit I can't fucking hear you over the heavy dood, so the SBH & I are going to celebrate with crushtacular Portland doomsters Witch Mountain this eve in a local dive,



knowing that if there're big riffs aplenty, metal is metal is metal, fuck split ends.

Hail to the King, baby.

Waiting for Wotan's European Vacation

"Uglee Americains, Wotan waz last zeen zees way."

"Bollocks, Wotan ran me over, stole me Python DVDs, and wen' thataway!"

 

"Dad, what's that light?"

"I don't think Wotan wants to be found."

Semper fudge

I'd love to (not really) pen a few-thousand-word screed on this nothing's shocking smooth criminal agitprop but 1)I'm on staycation & 2)I've got to download and print my very own Harrier and follow the simple instructions to start my Marine Air Squadron for my triumphant return to the Towering Slab.

Ya'll gettin' some troo kvlt shock & awe, motherfuckers.

Old Euro

Club football's where it's at? I don't care, whispering sweet nothings to the big R over post-whatever as I swoon over a knightly tournament between the rich man's borders mapped in corpses, at least until 2016 when future FIFA Pretzeldent-for-life (you used to be cool, man) porks the Euro out like a North American everyone's-a-winner playoff. Hungary, there's hope for your very own group stage failure. I'm hungry. While I make me some chow, i.e. buy salt from the vending machine because this heart won't attack itself, learn who'll advance & hoist a trophy far less useful than Lord Stanley's Cup & bet accordingly opposite.

Group A: Easiest quartet, possibly. Hardest to predict, certainly. Russia (Zenit), like Spain (Barcelona), has a core familiar with each other, but keep your ushanka on. For now, having no dog but four cats, I have decided to use my mutt heritage to uncover a temporary rooting interest. Scotland's too awful to qualify for anything these days (thus their hope in joint-landing 2020's bloat), Germany's the Fucking Yankees, Merrie Ole's that annoying brat who won't shut the fuck up, thus I'm leaving my kielbasa in Krakow. [ed. note: Parmastan's Polish Village, smartly tapping the zeitgeist, rerevisited the garage days, JP2's wrinkly mug once again decorating Via Popeorosa, though perhaps Jan Tomaszewski's would be more appropriate] Sure, solitary threat Lewandowski's feeds are gonna be marked into the turf, but at least Szczęsny [ed. note: no i? Decadent West, pshaw] won't always be suckered into cleaning up a Wengerian back four disaster. Right? Furthermore, Nergal told leukemia to fuck off somewhere near the Baltic, worth at least one game winner.



Solidarność! Cech's punchless Czechs grind out the other spot. Unlikely, though 'tis a convenient excuse to type Pooty garrotting someone in a dark alley. This Greece ain't as greasy as 2004, but bottles tend to break on the second bolt.

Group of Death: Since Bert van Marwijk's pragmatism incorporates the presence of Sensei Nigel's Withering Touch, I don't see how the Netherlands don't advance unless Arjen didn't waste all his misfires against Fucksea. Not opening against the Germans, who are really fucking good going forward, helps & then there are the hard-luck Danes. Someone's gotta finish last whilst a preening Ronaldo whines for another foul. Wow, that's a lot of negativity, but what's life but parking the bus so the 0-1 doesn't become 0-5?

Group C: Oh, Yugoslavia, dicked by nationalist dickheads, what might have been. Croatia may have the sniffles, such as a few greying scalps & an kinda-sorta out-of-form Modric, but the champs don't. Or do they? Too much mileage, plus no Napalm Death & no David Villa means Prandelli's house brand Baresis perhaps dash past. Speaking of the boot, Trap's Irish are tenacious D & little else; score early, & lollygag.

Group D: Each write-up is smaller than the last. Maybe I'm tired. France is back less of an epic clusterfuck than in South Africa, but the egadsly Gourcuff's ostensible "replacement" M'Vila is hurt, so maybe they're not, though Benzema's on fire, so maybe they are, look at that word count climb, Sweden is Sweden only in reverse, Ukraine Nation digs techno too much, & a well-coiffed England would win the MLS.

Quarterfinals: The Dutch cash the Czechs [read: Russia], groan, Sweden expects the Spanish Inquisition, groaner, Germany bests Poland (insert your own witty world war punchline, I'm at my Gleiwitz end), groanest, & the eye-talians cheese the inconsistent surrender monkeys, weak like an Uwe Boll flick.

Semifinals: In a rematch of Bladder's ugly final, the Spaniards huff one more time. 2/1 on someone receiving an unprofessional foul. Easy picking the obvious, which is, when there's a scandal (Totonero, Calciopoli), Italy flourishes. Does Serie B criminality banish such bathroom theories? They're going down in the group stage, aren't they. Naw, here. Maybe.

Final: The third time's charmless. Sorry, mushroom man. Germany 2, Spain 1.

Waiting for Wotan #18

 

♪ spear and magic helmet ♫

"Spear and magic helmet?"

"Shit, just another cosplay geek."

 


"So sick of those nerds. You know, fuck this waiting, let's go play D&D."

Misty watercolor memories

Burnout is tired of doing the same fucking shit. The mirror may say 'tis, but the shadow knows even better. Since all devilry shall pass, I won't, unless it doesn't, then I will, but in honor of hmm-maybe global thermonuclear war, six yeas:




Play 'em loud & simultaneous, scare your neighbors who are probably bonging to some hippie peacenikery. Yeah, that'll rile 'em up. Jesus H Cthulhu, this post has nothing to do with that yawn. I'm bored with disclaimers. Pass the rabbit holes.

Who d'king, Part II, a play in three-quarters act

Characters
Miss Prunella Vulgaris, The Duchess of Hammer-on-Dulcimer, esteemed member of the Peonage
Juan, The Earl of Valdez, less esteemed member of the Peonage
King Diamond, King Diamond
Fadades, Gaulish misanthrope, pretend musician, & sky pie aficionado  
Kid Darkthrone, not-very-noted local misanthrope, reformed
Bear, bait, & lovable ursine scamp

When we last left our intrepid Peonage, they interstellar overdrove like 'twas Space: 1999. Thus exhausted from both the shark attack & a bad Jules Verne mock pastiche, they would gladly resume their lives of quiet desperation at the Museum of Palimpsest Oddities. Aliens always fuck shit up, ask any abductee.

EARL: Where are we?

DUCHESS: Not Prussia.

KID DARKTHRONE: Not Russia.

EARL: Nor Tunguska.

DUCHESS: That's -- nevermind.

BEAR (pointing): Growl.

EARL: This is like a bad Jules Verne mock pastiche.

DUCHESS: Only real.

FADADES enters.

FADADES: screech screechscreech screech screech!

EARL: Ja ja ja, mach schnell mit der explanation things, huh? I must get back to Dancecentrum in Stuttgart in time to see Kraftwerk.

DUCHESS: This is your brain on zero gravity.

KID DARKTHRONE: I've an idea.

KID DARKTHRONE whispers to BEAR. BEAR turns to FADADES.

BEAR (with menace): Growl.

The spaceship crashes near where it first blasted to the stars.

FADADES: screech screech screechscreech screech!

DUCHESS: Okay, now this is just lazy writing -- hey!

EARL: I can't move!

KID DARKTHRONE: Me either!

BEAR: Growl!

DUCHESS: Oh no! Pyramid power!

KING DIAMOND enters.

KING DIAMOND (singing): Osiris! Anubis!

FADADES (flabbergasted, like hearing Cold Lake for the first time): screech!

FADADES exits, running off into the desert, probably to pass out from screaming in abject horror then get eaten by a camel but since your humble playwright has no plans to bring him back, who cares.

DUCHESS: King Diamond! What are you doing here?

KING DIAMOND (still singing): Lady, gentlemen, & ursine tragic,
the most fantastical, blackest magic
from darkest depths was bestowed upon me
by the metal gods! The ability
to know the most silly of vocal traits;
heed Fadades well, headbangers, do not wait!
A clumsy attempt to save all of you,
why he attacked Hannibal's ship, 'tis true.
You know the legend of the Krypton Stone --
but where it lie, this modern Croatoan?
Beware! The Gaul's no villain of the piece,
but a fool, a poorly-chosen lackey!
In desperation doth wrathfully groan
the grim shadow behind his comic throne --
this, your heaviest metal advantage!

EARL: Who do we look like, the Avengers?

DUCHESS: A bad Marlowe mock pastiche.

KING DIAMOND (yes, still): Kid, whilst I recover from heart surgery,
I dub thee caretaker of metal, temporarily!

KID DARKTHRONE: Golly gee, Mr. Diamond, that's swell!

DUCHESS: How sweet.

EARL: Sniff.

DUCHESS: Back to work on time?

EARL: Got nothing better to do.

KING DIAMOND & KID DARKTHRONE board the former's viking longship, sailing down the Nile into the sunset, BEAR returns to Poland to devour any rowdy fans at Euro, & DUCHESS & EARL considered beginning to contemplate the next one-act but what can a Dr. Doomish cat really do in three months' time? There's no cat.

fin

The abyss also gazes into you

Face-eating Floridian zombies,
sartorial Seattle shoot-em-uppers,

necrophiliac Canuck porn actors on the run from Interpol,
politicians.

Oh, cosmos, so tricksy.
Necrophiliac Politician, the best grindcore* band you've never heard of.

The apocalypse, it ain't coming, you've been soaking in it since day one.
Pass the popcorn, hold the delicious yellow chemical sludge.

Ain't feeling wordy sans offline, & that ain't for you.
This counts as 54% of a post, 38% of an MFA poem.

*example of an oxymoron

Waiting for Wotan #17

"Blah."

"Eh?"

"Meh."

"Heh."

Who d'king, Part I, a play in three-quarters act

Characters
Miss Prunella Vulgaris, The Duchess of Hammer-on-Dulcimer, esteemed member of the Peonage
Juan, The Earl of Valdez, less esteemed member of the Peonage
Hannibal, no-star general & playboy son of a noted Tripolitanian fashion plate
Fadades, Gaulish misanthrope, pretend musician, & sky pie aficionado
Kid Darkthrone, not-very-noted local misanthrope, reformed
assorted piratical henchmen, paid in scale
Bear, bait, & lovable ursine scamp

When we last left our intrepid Peonage, they partied like 'twas 1899. Thus exhausted from both the debauchery of Baba Yaga & Lemmy's nuptials & the recovery of the Fabergé Potato, they gladly resumed their lives of quiet desperation at the Museum of Palimpsest Oddities. Books not having brains of their own however, but ones under the control of drawer-ridden parchments desirous of a window view, a vacation was in order lest bedlam reign, DUCHESS & EARL sailing the wine-dark sea to the coast of Barbary, because what entirely predictable turn of events could possibly take place there.

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #1: Ye scurvy dogs!

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #2: Ye be walkin' the plank!

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #3: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern ye ain't.

DUCHESS: Blame the playwright.

EARL: Fourth wall already?

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #1: Ye be seein' four walls!

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #2: Aft' ye walk the plank!

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #3: Mademoiselle, monsieur, my humblest apologies. They're new, & obviously stupid. At any rate, come with me if you want to live. My master wants to avaunce or find doubloons or something. Whatever.

Now prisoners, Number 6, I mean DUCHESS, & EARL are taken by ASSORTED PIRATICAL HENCHMEN to an ostentatiously extravagant jumbo schooner, a veritable star destroyer of the seas, if your humble playwright knew what a star destroyer was which, Lucasfilm, Ltd., he doesn't.

HANNIBAL: mumblemumblemuble!

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #3: Your incandescent desertship, pay attention to the man behind the curtain.

Curtain raises.

HANNIBAL: That's me!

EARL: Huh.

DUCHESS: It's not Captain Single-Eye. Didn't see that one coming.

EARL: Now that's good writing.

HANNIBAL: Throw her --

Timpani beat from behind the curtain.

HANNIBAL: -- in the shark tank!

EARL: This has to be performance art.

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #3: Um, your excellent spookiness, don't you wish to question them before killing them?

HANNIBAL: Indeed! Knave! Knavette! Where is --

Timpani beat from behind the curtain.

HANNIBAL: -- the Krypton Stone?

EARL: Bad performance art.

DUCHESS: What the hell are you talking about?

HANNIBAL: No time for interrogatives, Dr. Jones!

PIRATICAL HENCHMAN #3 (sighing): At least it's work. Um, your magnificent --

The loud report, not of corsairs firing their cannon, but of the roof of the great hall collapsing, collapses everyone's perception into a little squished thing like a creepy crawlie left out in the sun too long, but creepy doesn't truly cover the aghast-nesse of all parties as the shark tank shatters, filling the hall with water & sharks that proceed to eat ASSORTED PIRATICAL HENCHMEN but not DUCHESS & EARL because what entirely predictable turn of events could possibly take place now.
 

DUCHESS: When you see the world --

EARL: -- the world sees what's for lunch.

BEAR & KID DARKTHRONE enter.

BEAR: Growl.

KID DARKTHRONE: Come with us if you want to live!

DUCHESS: Yogi Berra could write something better than this.

From the inflatable raft of KID DARKTHRONE & BEAR, DUCHESS & EARL watch the boat of the billionaire playboy son of a noted Tripolitanian fashion plate sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean. 

DUCHESS: What just happened?

EARL: Why don't you ask the playwright.

DUCHESS: Sarcasm. Didn't see that one coming.

KID DARKTHRONE: Hey, it's getting cloudy.

DUCHESS: That's no cloud.

EARL: That's a spaceship.

FADADES enters.

FADADES: screech screechscreech screech screech!

A door in the bottom of the flying saucer opens, & a shaft of light engulfs DUCHESS, EARL, KID DARKTHRONE, & BEAR, somehow pulling them upwards into the gravity-defying contraption.

DUCHESS: We're so fucked.


fin

It'll be a hot time in the old town tonight

Ah, that's nice, but needs more Immortal.

Yeah, dead horse. Don't like the stench, try the Space Casino.

Sunburn

Fuck, it's gonna get hot. Might explain folks forgetting about pot numéro deux two days in a row which ain't just for smokin', but doesn't others Pepperidge farming their annual springtime douchebaggery. That's a well-cultivated hydroponics, narc, a burn I want out of.

How come I always finagle shit on the Wheelie Bus when I've no ball-point because the domestic point lost its brass & I had to purloin myself for gold? That Homer sure was s-m-r-t. Repetitively repeating repetition gets repetitive, but O, it's awesome: fourteen's easier than 14k.

Just call me Slackajawea.

Waiting for Wotan #16

"Bear, what is best in life?"

"To embrace your boredom, see time driven before you --"

"-- and to hear the lamentation of my waiting?"

"That is good! That is good!"

The dead zone, or, heavy handed

Ocean's have them, so does this on-rails gig. Ids low & high tiptoe through conscience, the real magnet tar pit trap. Benadryl Nyquil quill, post-sick (an epilogue, not this), sick of this a bit or more. Wotan tomorrow, or not.

What will be is heat, the complaining of yours truly, the eye rolling of ghosts & those that are flesh but it's hard to tell at times, swampy skin & salted corneas, senses adrift like a boat on the ocean, a dead zone. What, too heavy handed?

Find some tulips & get tiptoeing.
♪ I'm a librarian (not really) & that's okay, I sleep all night & I sleep all day ♫
Books checked out to grad students are due on August 20th.
CTHULHU IS WATCHING

If we all human sacrifice real hard, maybe he'll devour NATO.
No, this is not a political post.
An imaginary real beast from beyond the stars eating empire is a chortle.
Please fucking keep your 2012 stuff under ice.
Merci.

This is what it feels like, when doves take a vacation day

Thanks to a comrade-in-armed-conflict, I will get to sit on my ass watching footie & consuming pizza rolls for the day [ed. note: can it, Columbus, or I'll live blog] which, to be sure, isn't as swanktacular as a chance at low-interruption creation & immersing within a painted apocalypse, but I've low no ambition beyond the occasional piece of occasionally not-sucky verse, a failure in progress; pretending to re-learn what little guitar I once pretended to learn; mock turtle penance for a multitude of sins; & moderately pleasant diversions before the inevitable myocardial infarction turns me into the material component for necromantic spellwork, verbal & somatic sold separately.