Well . . . I know I’ll live to regret this picture . . . but below is the poster for the Brothers Doetsch Magic show.  In case you want a view of the picture we’re parodying – CLICK HERE.

And now our poster.  The info on the bottom isn’t complete or finalized…but it’s basically it.

Today is the Ides of March.

 

H.P. Lovecraft didn’t survive the Ides as he died, on this day, in 1958.

 

“Et tu, Cthulu?”

Well…I just got a hair cut.

They might have taken off too much.

I’m undecided.

My head feels light.

“There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the Bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.”

-Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”

 

OK.  I think this will be my final epic poem excerpt for the while – I don’t want to over due it, over talk it, at this early draft stage.  But this little bit is another, sort of stand alone piece.

I make a lot of allusions to favorite authors in this book (especially Poe and Dante).  I take phrases and lines from some of these authors, and bend them to fit in various places in my patchwork book (I think of it like improvised Jazz riffs where a musician starts with some pieces by his/her favorite musicians…and then improvises into their own).

Let’s just say that the underworld of my epic, Sheol, is a dark, Escheresque sort of city, full of odd angles, bleak buildings, Plutonian streets, and shivering walls.  In one chapter, the fallen angel, Syth, and Crow enter a mansion and a grotesque masque ball full of jaded souls.  It resembles, more than a little, the masquerade ball in Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”  However, I have a hidden homage within this homage, as Crow notices the jaded shades (I use the word “shade” when referring to the trapped souls in Sheol, as it’s a word often used in Classical mythology and, I think, sounds cooler than soul or ghost) and comments on them.

 

From here, I pay an allusion to Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl.”  I structure it like the beginning of that poem and even nab and modify several phrases (good poets borrow…great poets steal).

 

So here it goes (you can check “Howl” out online if you wish to compare):

 

 

The ball assaulted the senses from every angle,

trying hard to keep any lengthy thoughts,

any brainy meditations,

from forming in the skull.

The ball, the great handicapper raged,

leveling all intellects, to one low line,

all flat-lined . . .

The music shook the floor,

and the flicker-flash strobe lights,

pulsed outside, through the color-tinted pains,

producing all manner of grotesque effects within.

 

They danced and sashayed, in dead, languid gestures.

They grinded and groped in dead body languages.

These, a particular species of the souls unsure –

I could already see the leopard spots plaguing their skins.

 

Down in Sheol . . .

 

I spy the good and the bad and the worst and the best minds of all generations gone to their eternal restlessness, gray madness (madness comes in different colors), light starved jaded shades,

 

shambling through the necro-streets at the 13^th hour, hungry for a fix of forgotten emotions –

 

broken angels yearning for the severed, heavenly connection, the starry dynamo lost to the anti-sky, to supernatural darkness, in the machinery of the Word –

 

and the supremely jaded shades shamble here, to the grotesque masque, jaded shades who . . .

 

who find life and death as equal jests, but who never really laugh –

 

who shed no tears for fear of ruining statuesque demeanors, but suffer black stains, that run like mascara, along the soul –

 

who writhe and grind and suck and swallow and snort and cut and staple and pierce and pump and pop and buy and flaunt and shoot and die years before they’re dead –

 

who commit sloppy cries for help just for a jingle on the phone –

 

who giggle and compare black pearl necklaces and giggle and compare the calibers of suicide bullets rattling in their dead, rich spouses’ heads and oh darling, yours was a .22 too? let’s do lunch –

 

who poison their minds with background noise until the one in the mirror is just a stranger they hate and try and kill with plans and pills and procedures –

 

who, mind-poisoned, mind-fucked, and dead before their time, loose the communal-memory-instinct to lust after curvy and plump and healthy and instead hunger-lust after dead things, after emaciated and bony and anemic and hollow-cavity filled – until magazine covers turn to necrophilia porno in disguise –

 

who commit carnal acts till adnausium, writhing in and out in animal acts without primal rhythm, without the simple animal wisdom to enjoy the yin/yang dance –

 

who scab over their eyes with ever sharper medias and ever increasing Oedipial daytime talk and freak-legion queens who talk into their freak-legion scepters and build their empires on modern geek shows and freak shows and the audience constantly picks the eye-scabs open and they bleed less and less and less –

 

who leer and jeer and sneer in VIP thrones in new world order club houses, commit blood and soul sacrifices to Moloch, saluting stone statues of a dead owl, play competitive games of hop-frog with their exclusive peers by procuring solid gold toilet seats and other trophies of white-collar crime –

 

who play the hunters hunted game on the meat-market dance floors, alone in a crowded, writhing strobe-purgatory – poachers hunting for maidenhead merit badges – and throngs of undulating bacchante parades committing bloody sporagmos on self-esteem –

 

such multitudes of jaded shades –

I had not thought life had undone so many.

 

And is there anyone left to Howl for Solomon?

Fairy tales are more than true:  not because
they tell us that dragons exist, but because
they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
-G.K. Chesterton

So…given my penchant for black clothes and things macabre, I tend to come across a certain set of pensively/depressed folk.  This really isn’t my bag.  And I had a reaction to it…well, the character of Crow, the sardonic, dark Muse of my epic, had a reaction when he came across this type.  Crow wanted to rip into her…and the cool/strange thing that happens, when a character develops enough, is that you have to let them do what they want, they grow wills and become autonomous.  It’s kind of funny.  It pokes fun at the very type of person that might want to read my dark, dark story.  But then, Crow is of the Trickster archetype and that is a character who not only attacks other characters, but threatens to tear down his/her own mythology.  And Crow does this to.  He makes fun of my story several times, makes sure the reader knows it’s not a “proper” epic.

 

So here’s his reaction to tragically hip youngster who might be writing cutesy suicide poems on a Hello Kitty notepad while sipping overpriced, burnt coffee…

 

[Don’t worry if you’re skipping any excerpts until you can see the larger whole.  This is kind of stand alone.  And a special note – “Ghede” is the death Loa of Voodoo culture.  He’s a grinning trickster himself, much different than the grim Deaths of Europe.]

 

 

 

Crow, I see,

I see a young lady,

wandering the isles and stacks of

candy, dirty magazines, and snacks.                          

She’s all in black and lace

and ebony eye makeup.

And she wears an over-practiced frown.

Up and down, she wears skulls,

but these aren’t Ghede skulls,

these aren’t grinin’ skulls,

they have adolescent frowns.

 

All hail the Brooding Queen.

Seldom seen.

Silent scream.

Too tragically hip,

too poetically pensive.

She struts and struts all in black,

brooding Byronically –

pouts and frowns –

plays with her toy pain –

dresses it,

poses it for all to see

adolescently.  She pets her pet, pain.

She does not know

the first syllable of the encyclopedia of Real Pain.

She will not sing her melancholy directly,

but tries to transmit it through reverse-osmosis-telepathy.

But no one sees.

No one looks at the Brooding Queen.

And she’s sinkin’ fast in the quagmire, quicksand despair.

But, to be fair

it’s self-inflicted despair, self-centered despair.

She wears despair like a hip-hip hat,

and she’d never care

to give it up.

It’s too-too tragically cool

and too-too comfortable

to wear.

And she’s sinkin’ fast in the quagmire, quicksand despair,

till she’s just a face in the ground,

feet tramplin’ her frown.

They all see me, she thinks.

They all know. They all feel bad. They all see how pained I am.
But no one sees the brooding queen.

No one remembers.

She does not remember.

She cannot remember why she started brooding . . .

These helpful instuctions on using MySpace were brought to my attention, online:

Let’s face it: we all have a MySpace. Millions of users register on the site each day so the odds agree with me, people. If you don’t know what MySpace is, you’re in the minority. But not the kind of minority that you stereotype; I mean a general representation of fewer people. Incase you don’t know, MySpace is basically the Facebook for college dropouts (or those winners who never even bothered at a higher education) since you don’t need a university e-mail address to register. However, you do need to have a basic understanding of how to be infuriating, narcissistic, and master the ability to be an overall terrible human being. Here I will give you a beginner’s guide to sucking at MySpace, even if most of you don’t need it.

Let’s begin with your page layout. You’re going to want to go completely overboard on it. Choose, let’s say, a yellow font over a bright orange background. Then insert as many moving, sparkly, chartreuse colored items in the most unorganized way possible that will make me really want to come up with a generic metaphor for seriously injuring my eyes.

Always make sure your default picture is a self taken portrait with less than average quality. If a friend snapped the picture in appropriate lighting, delete it immediately. Now try and imagine something very depressing; perhaps how you felt when you realized there was no Santa Clause or how you’ll feel when you decide to retire and realize there’s no Social Security. Now hold the camera out at an arm’s length randomly snapping pictures of that gloomy stare. Another basic step is to never set your display name to accurately resemble your real name. Never! Instead of “Becky,” you should now be known as +[]*MeNd THiS BLeeDing HeaRt*[]+.

Insert an irritating music video into your profile. Never under any circumstance place it near the top of your profile, because then it’s possible to pause it before interrupting the good music that I’ve already been listening to. One of the biggest mistakes made by people who do not suck at MySpace is not being annoying enough. If you want to ensure a satisfactory level of displeasure in anyone that comes across your profile, I suggest adding a totally different song in your profile that starts playing at the same time as the initial music video. I think a Kanye West song playing over a Clay Aiken video would suffice. But please remember to make me scroll and search for them!

Here’s an important one: you know the bulletin feature which lets you write a message to all of your friends at once? Overuse it! You should be asking for picture comments and other undeserved attention at least nine times per week. It may be tough to squeeze all of this begging for acknowledgement in between having sex with random men to make yourself feel prettier but trust me, this step is very crucial. Just remember that nine is only the minimum, so I want you to feel free to really go nuts with it.

Make more great use of the bulletin feature, asking which of your friends would like to date you, fool around, or get together for some sweet, sweet, emotionally vacant sex. You should expect honest responses regarding this topic because you have no soul.

Post a fictitious story that tries to prove men are the most horrible things since slavery, the UPN network, and the Holocaust combined. “One day Sally was rushing home to tell her boyfriend how much she loved him. She even planned on promising him unlimited blowjobs whenever he wanted! But Billy did not appreciate her and never made time for her in between his hobbies of throwing hard objects at babies and lynching the homeless. Sally got so upset that she wasn’t paying attention to the road, ran a red light and got hit by a driver who had the right of way. This “obeying civilian” was a man and therefore was to blame. For the rest of Billy’s life, he regretted not treating her more like girls are treated in romantic comedies!” It doesn’t even matter if the story makes no sense, as long as it has the potential to brainwash a portion of naïve girls.

Keep overusing those bulletins, people! This time, I want you to notify everyone on your friends list as to what your dating status is. What’s that? Oh, don’t be silly; of COURSE we care!! Now, you should do this by assigning a color to each possible situation. For example, “Blue=single and content; Red=single and looking; Yellow=taken; Green=taken but banging your boyfriend’s brother” and so on.

Don’t slow down with the bulletins just yet! Post another one with enclosed test results showing “how naughty u r” by listing which risqué activities you have completed. Some examples of these activities include smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, sneaking out of the house, being pregnant, and bestiality.

If you still cannot sense sheer frustration out of each and every one of your friends, then you have failed at following my instructions. But don’t worry; there is one last tactic we can try to help you complete your task of sucking at MySpace: be a 7th grade girl registered on MySpace.

Hey, if you’re on MySpace, you’ll want one of these.

Yikes!

I didn’t realize how bad the storm hit Springfield untill I woke this…evening.

I hope everyone is allright. It sounds like they are (except for a bit of damage).

Busy-busy.  But here is a stream-of-barely-conscious-thought barrage of what’s going on in my little world . . .

 

I’ll be the Alumni speaker, at the Writers’ Contest Banquet, at Eureka College, on the 28^th of this month.  I’ll talk about writing and…well…anything I want, I guess.  I mean, I’ll have the mic, they’ll have to listen to me.

 

On March 24^th and 25^th Nick and I will be performing our stage magic show at Eureka, in the Pritchard Theatre.  We recently took the photos for our posters and…well…I can’t believe we went through with the nutty idea we had (but I have no one to blame but myself…since it was my idea).  I can’t recall a picture with less clothing…YEESH!

 

In case you thought to yourself, Yeah, Josh wants to become a famous, filthy rich author…but does he know what he’d do with his money?  Well, part of the answer to that question is right here – SECRET PASSAGES!

 

I recently sent some of my epic poem to a surrealist artist in Chicago.  Here name is Daina.  We’re brainstorming on the artwork she’s going to make to make my book look extra purddy.  In case you’re extremely board…or really interested in how a collaboration between an artist and writer might sound . . .

 

The other day I was stuck in a really slow McDonald’s drive through line…so I opened my windows and blared “Hunger Strike” (“I’m going hungryyyyyyyy.  I’m goin’ hungryyyy.”).

 

Wikepidia is one of the awsomest research tools a writer (or anyone else could have).  It’s a free internet encyclopedia  that tends to have pretty complete and accurate articles…and those articles are full of hyperlinks to related articles, making research pretty swift.  If only I could get the OED online for free.

 

I’ve decided to use the musical concept of the CODA in my epic poem (to finish off the poetic chapters).

 

Instead of posting another clip from the epic poem here is the first and last sentence of the whole book.  The story starts with, “The door opens . . .” and ends, “. . . the door opens.”  You can put the rest together, right?

 

This one is for you Dee:  YOU FUCK ONE GOAT!

 

What am I reading lately? [just finished the 2^nd book of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series – catching up on my beat poetry, mostly Jack Kerouac poems and Allen Ginsber’s “Howl” – The Maltese Falcon – A dash of Lord Byron poetry (I think if you were to blend Byron, Poe, and beat poetry…it would be about what I aspire towards) – Japanese Manga comics about vampires (Helsing)]

 

What am I listening to lately?  [a general mix of things, but a lot of Led Zeplin, White Stripes, Radiohead, Gorillaz, swing music, and a dash of spooky orchestra stuff]

 

T.S. Elliot has this to say about my birth month:

 

APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

 

What’s so bad about that.  I like breeding pretty blooms out of dead things.

I don’t know of any special significance of today…but yesterday was the Babylonian Feast of Marduk.

 

I’m out . . .

I just drove through a real ferocious thunder storm. It had that thunder storm smell. Driving through one, windows open, with the right music, fast as you can makes one feel more in touch with the pulse of universal forces, like if you just go a little higher on your tippy-toes, you’ll see the invisible gods.

An update soon . . .