Partisans crashed out in the living room.

Vanessa, Andy, Andy's bag of books, Herr Mann, (eventually) drunken literary/critical/social debate, König Ludwig Weiss, fairy wings, a Canon camera, religious schools, vile pseudo-beer, reading out loud, a cigarette run, plans, and a teddy bear with a gaping maw: life is good.

The Second Amendment has been repealed... for clothing.

I have stripped my jacket of the right to bear arms. It is now a vest.

The weird world of 4:30 AM.

After a night of drinking beer and downloading Finnish and Turkish black metal stuff, I decided to watch some television. What sounded like a good way to kill a couple sloshed hours turned out to be an experiment in surreality. Not that a whirlwind of televangelists, histories of ancient Indian mathematics, public access channel interviews with WWII vets, and Angel could be anything else. It was fuckin' fantastic, man, and gave me the impetus to finally pick up the copy of the Bhagavad-Gita that I bought from a Krishna in the parking lot of the Woodlands Mall four years ago. Even passing out on the couch was pretty comfortable, and my dreams- the contents of which I've sadly forgotten- were mighty interesting.

Being me rules.

War is a racket.

And I'm not the only one saying it. Take it from USMC Major General Smedley Butler (1881-1940).

WAR IS A RACKET.

What I did this weekend.

Finally went to Valhalla with Matt, Sara, and Kyle- exceeded expectations. Wrote, finally. Cooked dinner: zucchini and tofu. Got the fuck outta Dodge and crashed at Matt and Holly's Saturday night, spent Sunday shootin' the shit and walking around The Woodlands. Talked to my folks and Bill. Came home. Television returned from the void, for better or worse, probably the latter. Cooked dinner: tofu/sunchoke/onion/ginger dumplings. Read "Brokeback Mountain"- solid- and more of Manchester's book on die firma Krupp, continuingly solid too. Fought the Sunday malaise, ain't figured out if I've won. Probably not, since I've gotta go to work tomorrow. Fixin' to do some more writing in a bit.

What I didn't do: Write enough. Read enough. Smoke too few cigarettes. Something I can't put my finger on.

"Have you seen the Yellow Sign?"

About five years ago, Herr Link turned me onto Delta Green, which is a modern-day, paranoiac/conspiracy take on the Cthulhu Mythos. Written by John Tynes and Dennis Detwiller (with some help from a couple others, I think, but I'm too lazy to seek out proper attribution), Delta Green (also too lazy to use italics, if you haven't noticed) restructured Lovecraft and Co.'s nightmarish creations so as to become- unbelievably- even more nightmarish, simply by filtering them through modern (in)sensibilities.

The finest work that Tynes did in regard to the Cthulhu Mythos was with his study of the Hastur mythos: the god-thing Hastur itself, its avatar the King in Yellow, the city of Carcosa, the Lake of Hali, und so weiter. While these creations weren't Lovecraft's, but rather Ambrose Bierce's and Robert W. Chambers', Lovecraft popularized them, at least for latecomers like myself. Tynes' material in Delta Green:Countdown, based on his own temporary psychosis re: the King in Yellow, fleshed it out even further. Since reading Tynes' interpretation of Hastur and the King in Yellow, I can honestly say that it's haunted me off and on for the past half-decade. I can't explain it without pointing you towards the source material (both Chambers' work and that of Tynes), but rest assured that, often without any premeditation, the Carcosan aesthetic seeps into my writing more and more, and that I am deeply- not in the recently immersed sense, but in the more or less subconscious yet entrenched sense- fascinated, and terrified of, Hastur and his manifestations.

I reckon only Andy will know what I mean, unless you too have seen the Yellow Sign.

Moral of the story: do not ever underestimate the power of fiction.

Under the Sign of the Black Mark.

I got my stuff from Black Mark Records today, though it appears that Nordland I & II was out of stock and I didn't get charged for it. At least my Blood Fire Death LP came in, which is perfect because I really don't feel like doing shit except listening to records (specifically records, not CDs) and fighting my way through my recent bout of artistic laziness/apathy. This plan of action will be supported by my poverty; all but roughly twenty bucks of my paycheck has already been alloted to rent, bills, comida, postage to England, etc., so doing much of anything that requires money is out of the question for the next fortnight. Good thing I've got some of my brother's leftover liquor to hold me over, 'cause I sadly won't be buying much beer unless my kind friends take pity on me.

Oh yeah, I was attacked by a horde of grackles Tuesday, and when I got home around 2 AM this morning some dumbfuck had blocked my driveway with her Lexus (she reclaimed it before one of the owners of Bocados had it towed, and before I spat all over it). My life is just fuckin' stupid.

Fuck this world, and fuck us for letting it be this way.

(ACHTUNG! Skip the first paragraph, which is petty personal shit, and read everything that follows it.)

MotherFUCK, where are those notes I made months ago on the pseudo-real handful of obscure '70s albums and the people that wrote them and the nutjobs that spent their lives listening to them? I reckon I'm gonna have to tear the house apart to find the notes, or accept the fact that I probably tossed 'em when I moved down the street last August. Shit, there goes the framework for my next novel.

In other news: nothing... aside from the admission from our shithead president that he's willing to go nuclear on Iran ("All options are on the table") because said state is trying to do what the US and half a dozen or so other states have done over the past sixty-odd years. I'm not defending Iran's right to manufacture nuclear material (because, let's face it, their claims of wanting to use that material for energy alone are full of shit), but there is something seriously fucked about threatening to nuke someone for wanting to play "catch-up." I use quotation marks because while Iran may feel that having a nuclear weapon in their hands merely levels the playing field- at least in regard to other lesser nuclear powers, like their enemy Israel- it's really just giving the hardliners that run Iran the opportunity to fuck up some infidel shit big time.

Of course, it if does come down to American nuclear codes being unlocked and released to the appropriate military personnel, the next step, once the, ahem, "tactical"-sized mushroom clouds have dispersed, will probably be all-out conventional warfare with Iran. BRILLIANT. FUCKING BRILLIANT. Let's get several thousand more Marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors killed because our goddamned wannabe messiah of a president wants to maintain his religio-historial delusions and the hegemony of Western capitalism. And military casualties are on the tiny tip of a geopolitical, economic, and most importantly, moral/ethical iceberg.

Shit, I feel sick with rage. Let's hope that the Chinese- the fucking Chinese, of all people, and I don't add the epithet out of any problem with the people or the culture, but their government (N.B. There goes my chance of teaching in China in a couple years.)- manage to pull off the diplomacy that George W. "I like Jesus better than Jim Beam" Bush claims he's using to dissuade Iran from going any further with their nuclear plans. If Hu Jintao and Co. do the job, that'll be one hell of an international diplomatic coup for China. Fuck it, though- better China get some brownie points than people die.

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION (circle the correct answer): how did the US manage to avoid a throwdown with Iran when Ronald "senile as fuck" Reagan was in office, only to step into the same pile of shit twenty years later?

a) It was mutually beneficial for Reagan and Khomeini to talk shit so they would both look like badasses to the sheep they ruled, thereby keeping them in line

b) Reagan was occupied by the threat of the Soviet Union, and Khomeini by maintaining/building power at home, and any little spats between the US and Iran were just newspaper fodder

c) George W. Bush thinks he's got a direct line to God, and somehow, despite being drunk most of the time, remembers what went down during the '80s and wants to one-up his old man's former boss, because, hey, there's a war on terror or some such shit, and God's on my side, not the ragheads'

d) Capitalism allows for, and probably creates, such scenarios so the motherfuckers at the top of the global heap can profit handsomely while the rest of us worry about things like morality and humanity right before being blown to pieces

e) all of the above

With that, I'm outta here for now. We're all gonna be living out a heavy metal lyrical cliche before we know it unless we do something drastic, but right now I need some sleep.

Fuck capitalism. Fuck war. Fuck religion. Fuck nationalism. Fuck coercion. Fuck putting anything before the well-being of regular human beings. Fuck all of us for mouthing such platitudes.

We have manufactured, consumed, regurgitated, and once more consumed our own hell, whether or not this whole Iran thing goes down. Our world, which is inherently beautiful and wonderful and full of amazing people, is fucked.

FUCKED.



You are now free to indulge in the relatively minor personal problem addressed in the first paragraph.

Nowhere on the page.

I haven't written much lately, and not just here. I want to, but I'm either stuck or not in the mood every time I fire up MS Word.

Hell, I'm not even in the mood to write this, so I'm gonna call it a night.

P.S. The new Darkthrone record is well worth your time.

"...Satan."

Me and mine saw Metal: A Headbanger's Journey Friday night. I bought us all tickets in advance, thinking the theatre might sell out, but Jay, Silas, Andy, Matt, Dave, Vanessa, and I constituted roughly one-third of the crowd. LAME. The movie wasn't bad, though, not by a long shot. Nothing terribly insightful, but well-made and accessible to the laymen that didn't attend out of love of metal. Here's one more step towards solidarity.

I'm sleep. Bed time now. Auf!

Krieg der Welten.

Since I had nothing better to do, I watched War of the Worlds, which my brother left behind. It passed the time. It looked good. It had a lame ending. It felt like Signs ran into Independence Day on the street, compared notes re: alien invasion, and then both parties walked away after promptly forgetting what the other said. Seriously, when will people realize that if extraterrestrial life does contact humanity, we're either gonna be going through the most difficult phase of diplomacy we've ever encountered, or we'll be either red smears, test subjects, or slaves in no time flat? As I, and thousands more, have previously said: if they've got the technology to reach a planet millions of light-years from their own, they can do pretty much what they please with us.

The moral of the story is to keep a firearm in your home, so that you can kill your family and yourself before you become even more enslaved than you already are by modern capitalism.

And on that note, it's time for a super-fast snack before bed.

A good day to die.

Alas, I have not died, thereby ruining another perfect occasion. Oh, wait, I have no interest in dying, unless I'm guaranteed to come back as an ambulatory corpse a la Dickie.

I'm surprised by how well I handled Scott's first full day of absence from Houston. I didn't break down, or even come close to it, unlike yesterday. I did get some good news re: pops, which helped a lot, and Scott called to let me know that he arrived in New Zealand safely. I even managed to go grocery shopping (wherein I resumed my nascent vegetarianism, seeing as how there are no outside dinners planned for the immediate future that would require me to push my dietary/ethical notions aside), exercise, and write. I even took the first steps towards quitting cigarettes, kinda, in that I haven't already smoked an entire pack.

I have serious doubts about my willingness to give up tobacco. Shit, I always have, and now it's not just a matter of addiction. I've admitted for years that I am terribly addicted to tobacco, but until I got home to half a pack of Chesterfields, I could handle the regular nicotine fits, more or less. Once I was able to smoke at my leisure- and you all know I love leisure- I realized, not for the first time, that I may very well be willing to take the risks of smoking for a while longer simply because I love smoking. That said, I have to try to cut back, and I think I can do that. We shall see, won't we?

In other news, I know own one of the most comfortable pairs of pants I've ever worn, which are some BDUs my brother left me. And they're laden with one of my favorite things ever, namely pockets.

Un-fuckin'-believably, life seems almost decent right now. Emphasis on "almost."

D.A.S.

P.S. If you're reading this, Elspeth, I have no doubt you would be a wonderful writer. Shit, if I can do it, someone of your charm, wit, and ability certainly can.

Godspeed, Scott.

Here's to you, bro.

Take it easy, and I'll try to do the same.

Exhausted, besotted, and depressed.

Scott's send-off was rad. I drank a lot, forgot a lot, and did stupid shit. Apologies and thanks are offered to the appropriate parties.

Tonight is not a night to be home alone, but here I am. I wonder how much harder it'll be after I take Scott to the airport tomorrow.

Fuck.

Matt and Holly become one!

There are so many things I could talk about right now- hanging out with old friends, drinking massive quantities of beer, getting my first (and highly pleasant) lap dance- but I will ignore all of that in favor of applauding the marriage of two of my best friends, and two of the best human beings I've ever met: Matt Smith and Holly Hart. They gave me the honor of being a groomsman at their wedding a few hours back, and I honor them by smiling upon their marriage and giving every last ounce of support, blood, sweat, and good will that they might ever require from me.

There's really not much to say, aside from a comment to the newlyweds:

I'm sorry that you where whisked away in a car and not our zeppelin.

I love you both more than you will ever know.

The hours can't crawl slowly enough.

Shit.

The Black and Silver.

No, not the Blue Öyster Cult song, but the new releases by Venom, Metal Black, and Jesu, Silver.*

Metal Black, a dubious reversal of the title of Venom's classic, genre-naming second record, is, well, Venom, even if the sole original member these days is Cronos. (Fine by me; better Cronos be the sole survivor than Mantas or Abaddon.) This new album is a welcome cross between the "modern" Venom sound heard on Resurrection and Cast In Stone- and a back-to-basics-that-we-never-really-left-behind approach, which means it's still fucking sloppy, Cronos' bass tone rules, and the lyrics are mostly, as Keith Bergman puts it, "nonsensical devil bullshit... just as it should be." Simply put, it's my kind of metal, and it's all I've been listening to all day.

Until.

Silver, Jesu's new EP, made its way from Rachel's hard drive to mine. I've only listened to it once- well, I've listened to "Dead Eyes" twice- so I can't really comment too much**, other than to say that it's been a while since I heard an album that makes me really wonder whether or not I like it. No, that's inaccurate. I know I like it, but I'm not sure exactly how I like it. It sounds like Jesu, which means you can tell that Justin Broadrick created it, but one song in particular ("Star") is... shit, I don't know. Bad? No. Way the fuck out in left field, even for Justin Broadrick? Yeah. My first reaction was "this is a motherfuckin' pop song!", but a pop song written by the man who was Godflesh, which means it's not a pop song per se, but rather- fuck it, if you know Broadrick's work, you know what I mean. Rachel told me she didn't like it, and I can see why, because I'm pretty torn myself. The other three songs are more similar to Jesu's self-titled full-length, but not really. Seems to me that Herr Broadrick is really branching out, which I salute.

Enough shitty, insight-less commentary on records. It's time to write fiction.


*Silver actually comes out the 11th, but I got hold of it early, in mp3 format. I will definitely be buying it, probably on CD and LP alike.

**Har! I wrote more about Jesu than I did Venom, thereby rendering the asterisked statement somewhat untrue.

FIRE!

A tipsy credit card purchase I will not regret:

Bathory- Hammerheart longsleeve
Bathory- Hammerheart CD (because I gave mine to my brother all those years ago, and because I cannot hear "Shores In Flames" without getting goosebumps)
Bathory- Blood Fire Death LP (red vinyl)
Bathory- Nordland I/II double LP

Quorthon might not have been destined to live forever, but his music will.

Bring me the head of Brian Ching.

Scott, Vanessa, Dave, Matt, Sara, and I attended the first game of the new Houston Major League Soccer team, the Dynamo. Because I'm feeling very lazy right now, I'll just say that I had a lot of fun, the match was solid, and the weather was perfect. Brian Ching, one of the Dynamo forwards, scored four goals, which I saw three of (we left a few minutes before injury time started), and they were almost all headers. Crazy stuff, man; I'm definitely going back to see Dynamo play again.

This is a proper Saturday afternoon.

God DAMN, I love sunshine and Thin Lizzy and beer and reading Harper's.