Introductory Ramble

I don’t know what it is, but when Christmas enters a film, book, song, it swallows it and makes it belong to it. I love Christmas more than basically anything else. I’ve thought a lot about why and I think it’s because the real, boring exteriors of things are suddenly taken over by extravagant lights and displays in some attempt to transform this world into another one. It’s the only time of year when most people disregard the politics of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste. There is no way of accurately creating a Christmas display in ‘good taste’, it only succeeds in lacking all the extremity of joy which the season calls for. At Christmas, gaudiness, trashiness, and drunkenness are god.

The following is a list of things I love which may not be gaudy or flashy in the slightest, but sever the notion of Christmas from the virgin birth and offer some sort of alternative to holiday entertainment made by those who never heard the jolly word of Saint Nick. Of course, this list is not exhaustive, nor is it indicative of all of my Christmas likes. My favourite Christmas album is Phil Spector’s ‘A Christmas Gift for You…’, but it doesn’t fit here, nor am I suggesting that, say, William Basinski’s ‘Silent Night’ is an alternative to that album. Of course not, and to create some sort of hierarchy of good and bad would be out of keeping with the spirit I described above. And finally (sorry for the ramble), if my descriptions seem superficial it’s because (I am) I’m more specifically writing about the ways these things connect to the holidays, not about the full extent of how they operate as works of art. Thank you. Happy holidays XOXO

 

Writing, Books, Poems, Stories etc.

Merry Christmas From The World (Magazine)

A Christmas issue of Anne Waldman’s The World has since been archived online and includes wonderful selections from legends of the Saint Marks Church scene including work by Bernadette Mayer, Clark Coolidge, Eileen Myles, and more.

Available to read online here at JSTOR:

https://daily.jstor.org/merry-christmas-from-the-world/

 

A Christmas Memory – Truman Capote

(My attempt to make the fruitcake in the story, circa Xmas 2023)

I debated whether this was fit for inclusion but I couldn’t bring myself to pass it by. I have a soft spot for particularly the young wunderkind Capote who fancied himself the American Flaubert. He wrote multiple Christmas stories, ‘A Christmas Memory’ being the most famous, although I’ll also give a nod to ‘Jug of Silver’.

 

Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis

In Ellis’ debut, a college student returns home for the holidays and passively looks out at the degradation surrounding him. Hefty torrents of snowfall are swapped for large mounds of cocaine.

 

Nativity – Jean Frémon, drawings by Louise Bourgeois

Fremon’s story focuses on the first artist who wanted to depict the infant Jesus nude instead of strewn with bundles of cloth. Accompanying the story are Bourgeois’ illustrations which relate to birth and the female form. The first publication of the book was on Christmas day of 2009, coincidentally also Bourgeois’ birthday. It was translated into English in 2020 by Cole Swenson.

 

The Dead – James Joyce

(Illustration by Robert Berry for the Stoney Road Press edition)

The final story in ‘Dubliners’, widely regarded as one of Joyce’s first major achievements, focuses on a Christmas party and its aftermath. It rings true at any time of year of course, but the unexpected succumbing to what history unexpectedly drags up, be it death or old flames, seems particularly fitting for the holiday season and all of its drunken reminiscing at parties which go wrong.

 

Christmas Days – Derek McCormack, designed and decorated by Seth

If one thing is certain it’s that Derek McCormack loves Christmas. This book is an advent calendar decorated and illustrated by Seth, with an instalment for all 24 days, each chronicling the history of a beloved Christmas phenomena, often with a Canadian bent. The writing is playfully visceral in describing all manner of decorations, events and costumes, their curious histories, and the people behind them. I’m using it as an advent calendar at the moment and I always feel at least ten times jollier after getting to the end.

 

Christmas – Vladimir Nabokov

(Young V.N. dressed for the cold)

Written in 1925 in Russian for his collection ‘Details of a Sunset’ and later translated into English by his brother Dmitri, ‘Christmas’ contains all of the artful layering and linguistic trickery which he excelled at, and also notably features butterfly collecting or lepidopterology, a huge obsession in Nabokov’s life. He also wrote at least two other stories centred around Christmas, 1928’s ‘The Christmas Story’, and 1932’s ‘The Reunion’.

 

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

I re-read this every holiday season and I think it perfectly encapsulates walking around a city alone during that time. Christmas is of course so tied to childhood, which makes the backdrop all the more fitting for a narrator stuck between the uncompromising wonder and curiosity of childhood and the phony mediocrity forced upon you when you become an adult.

 

The Twelve Terrors of Christmas – John Updike and Edward Gorey

To be transparent, I’m basically ambivalent about Updike, but Gorey is one of the greats for me, and here Updike compliments him to great effect (or vice versa). For more Christmas Gorey I’ll direct you towards ‘The Haunted Tea-cosy’, an inversion of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’. I suppose this is the closest thing to a Victorian Christmas which I have included.

 

And finally, a story short (and rare) enough to merit a reproduction here:

Christmastime – Laura Riding

The story that follows, the only one in this book of latertime writing, was written for informal Christmastime presenting to friends. In considering it for inclusion in Progress of Stories I had an uneasy awareness of an attraction that the book can have for contemporary taste as modern fiction of a high degree of stylistic sophistication. Those who have adopted the book as an example in this tradition have, I think likely, read it in obliviousness to a motif pervading the whole; the tragic sense of what all stories can hold is not exiled but kept suspended in discreet reserve from the story-telling mood and scene. This story should help to unsettle the impression that I incline to stay at removes of icy intellectuality from the emotional potential of the stories I tell, by the taut closeness to the close-to-tragic happy ending of its portrayal of how human refusal to despair year on year renames itself hope.
– L.R.

CHRISTMASTIME
(1966)

I imagine the Angel of Immediate Joys and the Angel of Future Joys and the Angel of Past Joys all coming suddenly together at the turn of the year, when the paths of happy memory and happy expectation, and that of present happiness, suddenly meet and merge. An abrupt encounter!-for none of the three Angels had been thinking of the others: they tumble into one another-but save one another from falling, the joys they had been carrying, in great armfuls, spilled upon the crossways, mingledly… What now?

“Glad, glad!” all the people cry out—all cry out except the Angels “Oh, I am glad!” everyone says-except the Angels.

The people tread on the spilled, strewn joys as if on a carpet ol flowers, scarcely putting feet to ground.

The people do not know why they are so glad, whether because of old, remembered joys, or joys hoped-for, or joys of the time-being or the moments that just were. All the joys seem the same: “Is this not as much happiness as may be?” they feel. And, almost immediately, they are at a loss, yet do not know this.

The Angels, too, are at a loss; and they know that they are so. The festive moment of the people obscures the further way, the fourth path, the Unknown. To whom, the fourth path?

They hover at the edges of the celebration, watching how the people go joyfully round and round, and crisscross, and back and forth, tasting the thought of joy with indiscriminate zest-from then to now to later to then to later to now to then, mingling times, mingling joys, in bewildered step. “Ought we not to be doing something to help the people?” the Angels ask of one another by exchange of bewildered looks. What next for the people? (“What next for us?”)

Suddenly, before the faces of the Angels show any fretful appearance, the people weary, are heavy with themselves-comprehending as little why they weary as they comprehended why they celebrated and were so light with themselves. And they depart in the fourth direction, the way of the Unknown!-in straggling numbers, their step still bewildered, but as those going where all must go because there is no other way.

Where to, the Angels? They gather up the spilled joys in their separate kinds with the prompt touch of the knowledge of one’s own-which, flower-like, freshen in their arms and as from a not-mortal fading. Where next?

The crossways had darkened and shrunk with the departure of the people in the direction of the Unknown. There was no past or present or future, only the Unknown, and no light to lead the way but the first imprints of the people’s feet glowing faintly on the new road, the mark of the first slow passion of their advance, misdoubt struggling in them with curiosity, curiosity with misdoubt.

The Angels felt the clutch of fear: the people’s joys! (“They will need their different joys…”) They hurried after, and soon they too were lost from sight in the Unknown. They will find their separate paths again as the people begin again to divide their happiness into its ages. The scene is invisible. But time, the order of knowledge, has been restored. Truth has its clock again.

 

Film

Fireworks (dir. Kenneth Anger)

AKA maybe the greatest movie ever made. Anger’s first masterpiece includes a lot of Christmas iconography, most notably a flaming Christmas tree, but for further proof of its XMAS credentials just turn to the man himself: “This flick is all I have to say about being 17, The United States Navy, American Christmas and The Fourth of July”.

 

Tangerine (dir. Sean Baker)

I guess this has become the cool film to claim your favourite Christmas film is, but for good reason of course. Famously shot entirely with three Iphone 5’s, it’s the film that put Sean Baker on the map, and in my opinion, his greatest work. The plot is almost a pastiche of a Christmas film wherein the protagonist embarks on a chaotic journey on Christmas Eve, in this case scorched by L.A. sun and pulsing dubstep, but is heartfelt enough to be destined for its reputation as a modern holiday classic. And it is truly hilarious with incredible one-liners from start to finish.

 

Fanny and Alexander (dir. Ingmar Bergman)

It’s harder to feel more Christmassy than when I’m watching the Christmas sequence in this film. It’s so pure and beautiful and full of magic that cold evil hearts will melt and bells will ring.

This is my favourite Bergman and is committed to the theme which fascinated him all his life, trying to reconcile artifice and trickery from real magic, and what better a time than Christmas to act as the backdrop for this? I should also say that both the theatrical cut and the tv series version are brilliant, though I definitely prefer the theatrical cut.

 

Silent Night, Bloody Night (dir. Theodore Gershuny)

A Christmas themed slasher film predating ‘Black Christmas’ starring Mary Woronov in a leading role. In the film’s most effective and strangely beautiful flashback sequence, there are cameos from the likes of other Warhol Superstars, such as (to name a few) Ondine, Tally Brown, and my hero Candy Darling. Artists Susan Rothenberg and George Trakas reportedly also appear, as well as the legendary underground filmmaker Jack Smith, though you’ll have to squint to find him. To my pleasant surprise, the film holds up, particularly the flashback sequence and ending, and it was apparently ahead of the curb in predating the primary characteristics of many later slasher films, but with a genuine crust of exploitation flare.

 

Dans Paris (dir. Christophe Honoré)

I love this film so much. I have a feeling it was heavily inspired by Salinger’s ‘Franny and Zooey’ (which Garrel is seen reading in the film), and alongside that also channels the spirit of some of the more playful efforts of the early Nouvelle Vague. It focuses on two brothers at christmas time, one is left basically suicidal from a bad breakup and doesn’t want to leave his dad’s house. The other runs around the city all day getting involved in various sexual encounters. The Christmas spirit largely centers around the window displays of Le Bon Marche which Garrel runs out to see, and there is also a putting up the tree sequence.

 

The Dead (dir. John Huston)

John Huston’s final film, an adaptation of Joyce’s aforementioned story, is an ambitious goodbye in a way which seems rare. For one, the film is under ninety minutes and not a three hour swan song, and the star, Angelica Huston, doesn’t make up much of the runtime. It also mostly consists of strings of dialogue within some confined spaces, and the key into the emotional core of the film only comes right at the end. It’s one of Huston’s greatest achievements, and effectively manages to capture something desolate which the story has.

 

Christmas Evil (dir. Lewis Jackson)

I’m getting sentimental, and if you don’t go in for that then I’ll direct you here to what John Waters has called his favourite Christmas film. It follows a mentally disturbed man (oddly played by Fiona Apple’s dad) who after becoming obsessed with becoming Santa Claus, goes on a murder spree dressed as him. Out of all Christmas slasher films I’ve seen, I’ll say that this feels the most Christmassy somehow, probably because it takes the intensity of seasonal goodwill to its deranged extreme.

 

Tokyo Godfathers (dir. Satoshi Kon)

One Christmas Eve, three homeless people find an abandoned baby. One is a middle aged alcoholic, another a teenage runaway, and the other is a trans woman desperate to be a mother. The three of them go on an adventure to return the child to its parents, which is complicated when the past finds a way to catch up with all of them. Every Satoshi Kon film is mesmerising and this is no exception.

 

Some of my best friends are (dir. Mervyn Nelson)

It’s an interesting relic of its time which coincidentally also features Candy Darling (who steals the show while we’re at it, although Rue McClanahan is also pretty fabulous). Set in a gay bar on Christmas Eve, it follows its clientele who slowly get drunker as the night progresses. It was accused of ripping off ‘The Boys in the Band’, but unlike ‘TBITB’ this film isn’t interested in explaining what being gay is, though it has its cliches for sure. It also isn’t as conservative and revels in its squalor, which coincidentally makes it all the merrier, and very very Christmassy.

 

8 Women (dir. Francois Ozon)

A stylish murder mystery whodunnit set in a confined space at Christmas. It’s also a musical, so put this on after ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ is finished as everyone’s wiping their eyes, and you never know, they might cry again, or laugh at least.

 

Bell, Book, and Candle (dir. Richard Quine)

The same year that ‘Vertigo’ was released, Novak and Stewart starred side by side in ‘Bell, Book and Candle’. Novak portrays perhaps my favourite witch in all of cinema, who for whatever reason casts a love spell on old Jimmy Stewart at Christmas. It’s a delight from start to finish, and there are so many great performances, and it’s also set in Greenwich Village.

 

My Night With Maud (dir. Eric Rohmer)

One of Rohmer’s ‘Six Moral Tales’ series, his first commercial success brings Pascal and theology into the bedroom. Rohmer has a film for every season, and this is his holiday film, featuring midnight mass, snow, and what most Christmas films feature: love, or in this case, a dissection of it.

 

Female Trouble (dir. John Waters)

I’m cheating here, but I really want to point attention to what might be the greatest Christmas sequence ever put to celluloid. God knows I need my cha-cha heels this year, don’t we all?

 

The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder)

Every holiday romantic comedy stems from this. That’s all that needs to be said.

 

ALBUMS

A Christmas Record – Various Artists

You can take or leave some of this stuff, but what’s really remarkable are the two songs bookending the album by the one and only Alan Vega of Suicide. ‘Hey Lord’ is almost as frightening a goodbye as Phil Spector’s spoken work outro on ‘A Christmas Gift for You…’.

 

Silent Night – William Basinski

Ambient genius William Basinski’s hour long meditation could be a mood piece centred on the nativity, or it could serve as a way to clear your head from holiday overstimulation, either way it’s delicate and moving if you chose to really focus on it.

 

Warm Forever – Candy Claws

In ‘Warm Forever’, glitchy dream pop legends of the music board era, Candy Claws, created a twenty minute miniature holiday album that is both hushed and chaotic, like a mind too wired to sleep but wrapped in the softest blankets imaginable.

 

The New Possibility – John Fahey

The story goes that John Fahey walked into a record store one day in July and was surprised to see stacks upon stacks of copies of Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ album. The clerk told him that since there was a demand for Christmas music every year, it always sold out, and so Fahey got the idea to try to make an album that would sell out every year. He was right; it’s his highest selling album to date. Even among Fahey fans it is a divisive release, but the intricate quality of his classics are here. All in all it is an erratic and lonely set of renditions of old classics, an album interesting enough to call for countless re-listens so that you can really immerse yourself in it.

 

Christmas – Low

Low took their quiet, melodic, but stark and contemplative joie de vivre and brought it to Christmas with beautiful results. ‘Just Like Christmas’ is a very strong contender for the greatest Christmas song of all time.

 

Pop Caroler’s Songbook – PC Music

Hyperpop Xmas. This is a charity album released to bandcamp in 2020 featuring seasonal and wintery songs from artists in the roster of the now semi-defunct PC Music including: Caroline Polachek (with ‘So Cold You’re Hurting My Feelings’!), Hannah Diamond, A.G. Cook, and more.

 

We Three Kings – The Roches

A vocally manic and quaint folk album that is by turns beautiful and campy. It sounds just familiar enough to be something overheard from the inside of a Church long ago, but strange enough to sound like the work of some outsiders not allowed inside of a church.

 

Peace – Rotary Connection

My mission is to promote this album. It’s so good. I could gush about it but the most important thing that you should know is that this album answers the question of how Santa gets his sleigh to fly, why, by the recreational smoking of mistletoe of course! and if the good natured hippy stoner humor isn’t a turn off, then boy, do I have the psychedelic soul opus for you!

 

Songs for Christmas – Sufjan Stevens

Stevens is the patron saint of indie Christmas, so he’s a man after my own heart, and this, in my humble opinion, is the superior of his two Christmas albums (though I love ‘Silver and Gold’ too which has some very strong highlights). Here five yearly EPs are compiled to add up to an eclectic two hour opus featuring both deliciously hokey Americana and melancholic imagery accompanied by what sounds like the greatest high school band of all time.

 

Nathan’s Christmas (I – VI, ongoing) – SuperMega

Every year, Matt Watson of the comedy YouTube duo SuperMega records and releases an album of Christmas music under the alias of Nathan, an alter ego of Watson who is a kind-hearted manchild living rent free with his exhausted family. Watson has a musical background too, so the results knowingly call to mind the best comedy Christmas music of the past.

 

A John Waters Christmas – (Comp), John Waters

The pope himself curates a list of holiday songs from the past that only he could have picked and only he could have remembered. It’ll make you lament that there is no successor to Tiny Tim.

 

AND ALSO SOME SONGS LISTED WITHOUT COMMENT:

Sympathy for the Grinch – 100 Gecs

Jesus Christ – Big Star

A Child’s Christmas in Wales – John Cale

Christmas Is Now Drawing Near – Coil

Christmastide – The Fall

Christmas Day – GFOTY

Christmas in my soul – Laura Nyro

Player’s Ball – Outkast

Welcome Christmas – Red Red Meat

Santa Dog ‘78 – The Residents

Christmas Card From a Hooker in Minneapolis – Tom Waits

The Day the “Conducator” Died (An Xmas Song) – Scott Walker

Frosty the Snowman – Xiu Xiu

 

Finally, one oddity that deserves an honourable mention:

A Christmas Carol (TV Movie, dir. Catherine Morshead)

This 2000 TV movie adaptation of Dickens’ novel starring British TV tough guy Ross Kemp used to be on every Christmas morning. It’s so fabulously awful that it became a weird family tradition in my house to watch it every year to the extent that we now seek it out if it’s not on. It wouldn’t be Christmas without it. All you need to know is that it concerns Eddie Scrooge, a loan shark that wreaks havoc on a council estate. I could talk about it forever, but finally, I’ll shut up.

 

Afterthought

I feel like a kid at show and tell; I want to show you everything, but of course I can’t. So enough said, more or less, but if you have any recommendations/personal traditions I’d love to hear about them!

I’ll leave you with these words:

From the same desert, toward the same dark sky, my tired eyes forever open on the silver star, forever; but the three wise men never stir, the Kings of life, the heart, the soul, the mind. When will we go, over mountains and shores, to hail the birth of new labor, new wisdom, the flight of tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, – to be the first to adore! – Christmas on earth!
– Arthur Rimbaud, trans. by Paul Schmidt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. This weekend none other than the masterful Harper has put together a Xmas post for us all — appropriate thoughts for the season, possibly suggestions for your Xmas shopping/wants list, but definitely fodder for your souls. Please pore over their shebang and talk with them accordingly if you feel thusly inclined. And thank you ever so much plus the merriest Xmas to you, Harper. ** Morgan M Page, Thanks, I’ll see what I can find about them while awaiting your proper intro. And I’ll see if I can find Lauren’s novel. Intrigued. I’ve only gone to one mass in my life, and it was really, really long. And, yeah, dreamy. That’s kind of all I remember about it. Paris is kind of at its ultimate best around Xmas, it’s true. I have a few days to get better, so that’s the goal. Have a lovely weekend and beyond. ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, sickness sucks. I rarely get sick, but that doesn’t make it any easier. But I can walk and talk. You make me want to try Taipei. Maybe there’s a way. Maybe there’s a film festival there with sufficient bucks to fly us in. ** Laura, Well, thank you. I’m pretty sure I just have a baddish head/chest cold, but time will tell. I’ve certainly listened to people talk whilst seeming to be in a state of psychosis, but I don’t know if they were. People talking whilst in a state of shock can be pretty poetic. I have a roommate who will grab the reins if I get particularly zonked, but I think what I have is pretty survivable. No, never did a Paul Schmelzer. How curious that you did sort of. Huh. My cloudy being feels wonder, I think. ** _Black_Acrylic, I did nitrous oxide once or twice. It’s weird because, at least in my case, I didn’t feel high but I sure was acting like I was. ** Montse, Thanks, pal. You too? It’s so annoying, right? That’s what I feel. Like why me, this is so stupid. MC Yallah, yes! Lots of love and a portion of my medicine back to you. ** Dev, Hey, Dev, good to see you! I am still interested in the guest post, of course, but only if you feel like spending some of your precious free time making it. You too: sick. It’s weirdly comforting to know I’m not the only one, even though that comfort feels kind of evil. Enjoy a carefree weekend. ** Carsten, I’m taking it easy and downing possibly helpful supplements, and I think that’s all I can do. Bruce Hainley’s little description of RT is my favorite description of the film thus far. Dude nailed it, I think. Thanks. Then all fingers stranglingly crossed that the Jarmusch film meets your standard for his stuff. ** Steve, Seems like the blog was in a glitching mood yesterday. You would think re: those ‘trip reports’ but I haven’t seen any. I never really rest, and I have a lot to do, but at least I won’t have to do it while traveling. Yeah, the Korean market near me has a whole aisle devoted only to edible insects. ** HaRpEr //, Hey, buddy, thank you again ‘in person’ for the wonderful post up there! Any music project that loves GbV is going to automatically endear itself to me. In fact I just did a quick search and found a video of Sharp Pins covering GbV’s great ‘My Impression Now’ live so that cements it. Wow, a Xmas story too! Everyone, Bonus feature of Harper’s Xmas Shebang is a story they wrote about a boy who wants to kill Santa Claus. How can you resist? It’s here. Happy weekend! ** Uday, Grant, very nice. Write away. Granted my brain is inebriated in a bad way, but I didn’t notice any difference in your demeanour or writing yesterday. Interesting. Thanks, pal. ** julian, I would try Vicious Coffee in a heartbeat. Especially at this very moment. I’ll look for those writings on cruising and hope for a severe lack of nostalgia, the enemy. Curious. Thanks, julian. Have the healthiest weekend. ** horatio, Hi, horatio. I’m happy it sat well with you. I’ll go look for your instagram thing and pony up in return. Thanks re: my clogginess. I’m determined to thrash it into zero. ** Ryaha U•ᴥ•U, Hi! Welcome! When I was a teen I was locally famous for my ability to be very easily hypnotised. When my friends and I got bored, one of them would hypnotise me and see what they could get me to do for kicks. I don’t remember it like feeling much of anything, just kind of, I don’t know, like being muted physically and mentally or something. It was mostly like parlour trucks. Like they would tell me an extremely long series of numbers once, and then once I was post-hypnosis, I could rattle off the entire series of numbers. Stuff like that. So it wasn’t very mystical or anything for me. But I’m kind a pragmatic person, so that could be my fault. You’re a cinematographer? Say more. And about your film. Ideally I won’t be sick by then and can listen and respond attentively. Thank you! Glorious weekend to you! ** Okay. Please experience Xmas through Harper’s canny intervention, and I will see you on Monday.

* (restored)

 

‘Chloroform’s characteristically sweet odour isn’t irritating, although inhalation of concentrated chloroform vapour may cause irritation of exposed mucous surfaces. Chloroform is a more effective anaesthetic than nitrous oxide. The metabolism of chloroform in the body is dose-dependent; it may be proportionally higher at lower levels of exposure. A substantial but variable percentage of chloroform from inspired air is retained in the body; it is extensively metabolized by the liver. Metabolites of chloroform include phosgene, carbene and chlorine, all of which may contribute to its cytotoxic activity. Prolonged administration of chloroform as an anaesthetic can cause toxaemia. Acute poisoning is associated with headache, altered consciousness, convulsions, respiratory paralysis and disturbances of the autonomic nervous system: dizziness, nausea, and vomiting are common. Chloroform may also cause delayed-onset damage to the liver, heart and kidneys. When used in anaesthesia, insensibility was usually preceded by a stage of excitation. This was followed by loss of reflexes, diminished sensation and loss of unitary consciousness.’ –– general-anesthesia.com

Gameboy boy

Thoroughly Modern Millie

Guy friends

Buffy

 

 

After Dinner We Take a Drive into the Night

We are watching for someplace to eat. We feel we are prey

for the insane scavengers of the air. We cannot make up our minds

and race five hundred miles away from our hosts.

I begin to feel passion.

I walk back and forth and it is a slow movie,

without the interest of acting, only walking.

Far from my prying eyes she strips off her clothes.

Oh for the wings of a bird.

The record slows down;

sweat falls on the instruments;

the musicians are bored.

A hand comes from the clouds to give me a poem.

I accept it and we shake hands.

The incident with the hand haunted me for the rest of my life.

I began to gasp. It is time to sing the death song,

clearing the tops of the trees, hearing the glass

from the window and the traffic from the street.

Each year is a supermarket; no, each year is captured by a word,

repeated with nostalgia, overwhelmed by ineptitude,

dropping to the ground and rolling down the bowling alley of the sky.

— Tony Towle

 

 

Derelict aquatic park on Mars

‘The above first image offers a clean wide area view of this anomaly site without the distracting clutter of arrows and labels. I’ve done this because this site is otherwise busy with anomaly evidence and pointing it all out tends to make things get very crowded. Despite the above scene initially looking like there is little anomalous evidence in it, this is a very important site both from a surface water and civilization evidence point of view. The water and civilization evidence here is my fourth and last report to be drawn from the NASA-JPL-MSSS official MGS MOC M02-00163 narrow-angle image strip. As previously reported, this strip has produced the most numerous anomaly evidence so far for me of any single strip I’ve yet encountered in the official science data.

‘What we’re looking at here is a huge entertainment park sporting a aquatic theme but on a massive monumental scale and quite different looking than anything seen here on Earth. Further, this park has been subjected to some disastrous calamity leaving a portion of it in wreckage and some of the rest of it appears to have essentially been abandoned and allowed to become at least partially derelict and in ruins. Certainly, at the very least, this place is no longer operational as to its initial intended purpose.

‘One of the first things you should be aware of is that there is a very bright glow area producing a lot of light in this scene pointed out with an arrow and label. Whether this is a highly reflective spill area or an intense glow produced from within and/or on the ground is unclear because no amount of darkening will allow a sufficient view into this bright glow spot. At ground level immediately adjacent to and just a little to our right of the flow area is the terminating end of a huge skeletal bridge system coming in from further to the right. It has twisted and dangling girders at the glow area indicating a massive failure of the bridge right at this its largest point.

‘I strongly suspect that this bright glow area is something residual and possibly still active representing some catastrophic failure of something at this point in the past that helped create the sudden failure of this facility and its abandonment. This is also probably why it remains abandoned and not a candidate for reconstruction.

‘Imagine yourself now traveling across the trestle over the river from our right to our left and into the mid area of the still existing part of the bridge before getting to the terminating end but in the days when this site was fully operational. To your left you would see the giant shark like monument with its head area towering and appearing to hang over you dwarfing you and even the bridge system. Seen under the raised shark like monument’s front-end and behind it would be the lower profile mollusk like monument. In those past times, these two giant monuments would have probably been seen in standing open liquid water as though the creatures the monuments represent were alive in the water.

‘As large and dwarfing as these aquatic creature monuments are, on the opposite side of the bridge to your right from the same spot you would have seen a far larger far more massive colossal size clear conical shaped dome the size of a small mountain dwarfing everything. This clear dome would have been full of water and probably very large live creatures in that water appearing suspended in the air towering over you. Imagine the psychological impact as you leaned back to take in the monstrous height of this great massive pillar of water towering above you. The clear dome is still there, empty of course of water, and it appears intact and undamaged.

‘Imagine the great technical power it would have taken back when this was built to have constructed such a dome strong enough to withstand the outward pressure of all that mountain of water and its occupants even on a planet with a lesser gravity well. This clearly demonstrates just how technically advanced who ever designed and built this was or is and just how tough these clear domes on Mars can be amounting to heavily armored immensely strong constructs. Try as I have, I can’t detect any breach in the dome or that its shell has been damaged either.

‘The above image presents an enlarged even if very grainy look at the two giant creature monuments. We can see these at all only because of their huge size. Their location on the other side of the bridge from the bright glow area, their huge size, and their probable solidity as monuments probably shielded them from any real damage in the calamity that otherwise destroyed a portion of this show case park as to its intended purpose.

‘The monument on the left in the above image clearly represents some kind of fish type aquatic creature. The fairly clear head, nose, mouth, and eye visuals at the left end of the object with sunlight reflecting off of this area and with the head area elevated above and a little over the bridge structure as well as the general body shape indicates that this is probably a shark like creature.

‘The monument on the right in the above image appears to possibly represent some kind of mollusk or clam like creature. On the left end of this object nearer to us, you will note that this broader proportioned end’s leading edge is ragged and irregular. This is all typical of invertebrate bivalve type aquatic creatures as is the narrowing taper of the body to the probable hinged rear end you also see here. What is not so typical is the dorsal fin structure starting in the mid part of the bivalve’s upper back area and extending straight back in a narrow dark line to and wrapping around and under the bottom of the creature’s rear end.

‘This is not likely to be some ancient dead ruins subjected to a long span of time of weathering and exposure. Rather, it is more logical that either this evidence’s disaster was of relatively recent date not giving sediment enough time to build up or someone is currently and actively maintaining part of this facility or both.’ — Joseph P. Skipper

 

 

‘Your smell is intoxicating’

 

Stylish French women in the Soviet Union

 

 

The Promotion

I was a dog in my former life, a very good

dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being.

I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer

guarding and herding his sheep. Wolves and coyotes

tried to get past me almost every night, and not

once did I lose a sheep. The farmer rewarded me

with good food, food from his table. He may have

been poor, but he ate well. And his children

played with me, when they weren’t in school or

working in the field. I had all the love any dog

could hope for. When I got old, they got a new

dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade.

He quickly learned, and the farmer brought me into

the house to live with them. I brought the farmer

his slippers in the morning, as he was getting

old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a

time. The farmer knew this and would bring the

new dog in to visit me from time to time. The

new dog would entertain me with his flips and

flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just

didn’t get up. They gave me a fine burial down

by the stream under a shade tree. That was the

end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so

I sit by the window and cry. I live in a high-rise

that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises.

At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak

to anyone all day. This is my reward for being

a good dog. The human wolves don’t even see me.

They fear me not.

— James Tate

 

 

iDoser: Gates of Hades

‘iDoser is an application for the playback of proprietary audio content that uses binaural sounds to produce an effect similar to using certain drugs like LSD, marijuana and cocaine. It’s supposed to be perfectly safe and it’s 100% legal.

‘Research into the neurological technology behind I-Doser is sparse. Peer-reviewed studies exist suggesting that some specific binaural beat mixes can affect aspects of mental performance and mood, act as analgesic supplements or affect perceptions, but there have been no formal studies of any effects of mixes particular to I-Doser.

‘I wasn’t really interested in those that simulate drugs but there’s one that caught my attention. It’s called Gate of Hades. Gates of hades is a musical beat and series of sounds designed to make you feel particularly disturbing emotions. Specifically, it’s supposed to make you feel like you are falling into hell at infinite speeds. It’s iDoser’s strongest product and ideally it should scare you to death. This is what description says:

‘”Expect nightmares, near death experiences, and strong onset of fear.”

‘And I don’t expect any less since it costs $200.’ — Mayhem Makes Runescape Pure Clan and Community

Nichlas

German boy

Friend

Luke

 

 

Muse

from Pepi’s Symposium

Jean Cocteau

 

 

‘There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.’ — Antonin Artaud

‘Being sober on a bus is, like, totally different than being drunk on a bus.’ — Ozzy Osbourne

‘The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires.’ — Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘All the mistakes I’ve ever made in my life have been when I’ve been drunk. I haven’t made hardly any mistakes sober, ever, ever.’ — Tracey Emin

‘It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.’ — Walt Disney

‘People don’t deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them.’ — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

‘Perversity is the muse of modern literature.’ — Susan Sontag

‘My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication–it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness–it is all that I have.’ — Franz Kafka

‘The obese is in a total delirium. For he is not only large, of a size opposed to normal morphology: he is larger than large. He no longer makes sense in some distinctive opposition, but in his excess, his redundancy.’ — Jean Baudrillard

‘Oh! the little fly drunk at the urinal of a country inn, in love with rotting weeds, a ray of light dissolves him!’ — Arthur Rimbaud

‘I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.’ — Hunter S. Thompson

‘Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.’ — Edgar Allan Poe

‘I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.’ — Salvador Dali

‘Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious.’ — Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

‘Many years ago, my then-8-year-old friend Spencer asked a prominent jazz musician for an autograph, but when he was given the usual signature, he scolded, “Not your name… Mine!” Following his lead, I’ve been asking writers, artists, politicians, and movie stars to sign my John Hancock, er, Paul Schmelzer. So far more than 70 have agreed…’ — Paul Schmelzer

Mikhail Baryshnikov

 

Jimmy Carter

 

Charlie Daniels

 

Dan Castellenata

 

Ed Ruscha

 

Errol Morris

 

Fats Domino

 

Frank Gehry

 

Mr. Rogers

 

Isabel Allende

 

Jeff Tweedy

 

Barbara Kingslover

 

Kweisi Mifune

 

Laurie Anderson

 

Matthew Barney

 

Naomi Klein

 

Robert Wilson

 

Thurston Moore

 

Wim Wenders

 

Wolfgang Puck

 

Yoko Ono

 

 

The Hotel

The two knights suggest to the king that he take the hero

into his confidence. The pantomimes are spaced to accommodate them.

It is a work of great beauty. It is night. Four boys

remain on the scene. They choose four girls. This is what happens:

Her beauty and her brains work like fire. She is shocked

by his remark that he cannot spend too much time. We see grace of

body and mind being torn to pieces. Now begins the bitter aftermath.

Now the prayers of Orpheus are answered. It is the ancient

myth of Orpheus. Orpheus cannot console himself with his own song.

The song of the lyre is inadequate to his bereavement. Now he finishes

the song. Everything is green. Everything is splashed with color.

— Tony Towle

 

 

Vicious Coffee

‘A cup of iced coffee at an Adelaide, Australian cafe called Vicious Coffee boasts 80 times more caffeine than a shot of espresso and 50 times more than a regular cup of coffee. That amount of caffeine is half the amount of a lethal dose.

‘It is recommended you take your time drinking a large, which should you should sip over four hours. Otherwise? RIP. The “high” will last you 12-18 hours. According to the USDA, a fluid ounce of espresso has 64 milligrams of caffeine and 95 milligrams in an 8-ounce cup of coffee. Vicious coffee, however, has 5 grams of caffeine.

‘According to the owner of the cafe, Steve Benington, “Some people love it and some are broken by it.” — Elite Daily

 

 

Chocolates

In 1934 a woman was charged with killing two children with strychnine laced chocolate.

In 1976 suspected terrorist, Wadia Haddad, died after allegedly being fed poisoned chocolate for six months by Mossad agents.

In 2006 a man killed his parents by serving them a chocolate mousse containing poison.

A woman fought with husband over a chocolate cake. She claimed she attempted to leave with the cake but her husband objected. They quarreled and she settled it by stabbing him to death.

In 1990 a man was charged with killing a 3-year-old girl by force-feeding her a chocolate cake. She choked to death.

An 82 year old man was attacked and robbed by thugs posing as chocolate salesmen. A week later he died of a heart attack.

A 75 year old heart patient was thrown to the ground by a drug addict. The addict was running with a box of stolen chocolate bars when the collision occurred. A month later the man died.

In 2008 a young man confronted a teenager who threw a partially eaten bar of chocolate into the window of his sister’s car. The confrontation escalated into a fight. The man later died from a head injury he received during the brawl.

In 1910 a young woman dies while trying to share her chocolate with her co-workers. She attempted to cut the bar in pieces and instead slipped and cut an artery in her leg.

In the 1960’s iron pills were chocolate coated. They resembled and tasted so much like candy that many young children ate them. None of those kids didn’t survive.

A man, dropping blocks of chocolate into a cauldron, died after falling in.

An employee of the South Bend Chocolate Company was found dead in a company machine.

A 19 year old man was found dead by his fellow employees. He had become submerged in a giant tank of molten chocolate.

A senior citizen left the Sydney hospital to buy a chocolate bar. His body was located a week later.

A 60 year old man’s body was found in the streets of Aberdeen, Scotland. The old gent was carrying a box chocolates. The police think he might have been going to visit someone when he died.

A man with an eating disorder crammed an entire Mars bar in his mouth and choked to death.

A girl choked to death on a chocolate swiss roll. Unfortunately she suffered from a congenital problem that made swallowing difficult.

Chocolate eggs containing toys caused the choking deaths of at least three children.

Inhalable chocolate

 

 

Stephen Shanabrook “Chocolate Box : Morgue”

 

Chocolate Karl Lagerfeld boyfriend

 

Chocolate boat

 

Chocolate larvae

 

In an Osaka brothel, you can have snuff sex, whatever that means, with this chocolate prostitute for the equivalent of $10,000.

 

World’s largest chocolate bunny

 

Chocolate ammo

 

Chocolate-Avocado Cake

 

Julia Drouin ‘Disco Ghost’ (2013)

 

Chocolate Grace Jones

 

Frantz Kobe Sweets ‘Chocolate City’

 

Pink and white chocolate fountain

 

Chocolate covered peeps w/ strange chemical reaction

 

Michele Micha

Chocolate anus
—-

 

*

p.s. Hey. Warning: My jet lag seems to have evolved into some kind of cold or flu, so my cognitive abilities are even less available today. Urgh. But I’ll do my best. ** jay, Hi. My return to full time gaming will hopefully include avoidance of time/psychology swamping games a la ‘Animal Crossing’, but I’m susceptible. I hope Xmas with your boyfriend’s family means lots of presents. ** Bill, You’re in Hong Kong. I’m so out of it. What do you especially like about Taipei? Probably a huge question. ** Laura, I need to buy a second pair of shoes clearly. I think mine are Adidas? I don’t even know. They’re white. We did about ten or twelve takes of the final reaction shot, as I recall, and that was the only take where all of them did something interesting. Sadness can be fruitful, but I suppose rarely? Thank you. ** Morgan M Page, The doc you’re preparing sounds really interesting. Are they are a relatively obscure group? Are you shooting current day stuff too? Great luck with that. I saw Cassils perform once, and, yeah, it was powerful. Well, my holiday plans are now dependent on whether this oncoming illness thing is a quickie or not. But, thus far, eating a Xmas buche with friends on Tuesday is the only celebration. You? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been Queer since you were knee high to a grasshopper, but my definition of Queer doesn’t necessarily depend on one’s romantic or sexual inclinations. ** Steeqhen, Thanks. If I go full on back into games, I would imagine it would involve the Switch, yes. Although Steam would be employed. I’m excited for the new ‘Resident Evil’. The last one was great. ** l@rst, Cool, pony up with your album deets, sir! ** Jack Skelley, Thanks, J-ster. So sad I barely missed the Killian shebang. Yeah, super happy with how well ‘RT’ seems to be being received. Jet lag turned ugly, but what can one do. I’ll endeavor to be alert in time for our Sunday visit. <3 <3 what’s left of Dennis. ** julian, Is that true about a resurgence of art about cruising? I’m going to peel my eyes. As soon as I’m not six feet under whatever malady I’m beset with, your EP is top of the draw, and I’ll report back. ** Carsten, Obviously sorry about the blog’s blockade on your comment. Wtf?! I have no clue why the blog treats commenters as randomly as it seems to. Thanks about the lists. I’m guessing you’ll love the Jarmusch, but let me know. No travel for the time being. I think the film touring will kick back into gear in late January is my guess. ** Nicholas., Oh, you’re so sweet, pal. It was joyous. Indeed. ** HaRpEr //, Right, Nayland did the ‘Dream Police’ cover. My publisher put so much color grading over it that I forgot. Teleport me some of that ‘feeling good’ stuff if you can figure out how. There’s a buche on order (the melted apples one) and, barring disaster, friends and I will tear it to pieces on Tuesday. I am a total sucker for four-track recorded rock/pop too, unsurprisingly. ** Steve, I’ll do a search for the minister’s album once I have a freed up brain. Does sound wild. ** horatio, Thanks for the beautiful read. I’m pretty sure most of the guys on the slave sites, young and old, are just gooners with overactive imaginations. I don’t have a PO Box, but I do have a physical address. I don’t want to give it out here, but hit me up at Instagram or email, and I’ll pass it on. And, wow, thank you guys for thinking of me! ** Okay. Whoa, I made it. Let’s see … today involves a very old restored post that I thought was worth repairing and reconstituting. But you be the judge of that. See you tomorrow.