In remembrance

In the metaphysical equivalent to a grizzled mountain man coming down to the trading post after a year of trapping, I interrupted my term of solitary contemplation and pursuit of the Way and visited an actual church for the first time in rather a while.  And if it took an invitation from a pretty woman to get me there, well, God moves in mysterious ways.

It is good, we are taught, to fellowship with each other, to commune with each other.  And it was good to stand among many and sing the songs of Zion once more.

And as it happens, on this particular Sunday the sacrament of Communion was observed, which I had not taken in quite some time.  This ritual, this magic cannibalism of sorts, where we take into ourselves the flesh broken for us and the blood for our sakes spilt, is the sacred Mystery at the bloody beating heart of our faith.  Out of death, life.  Out of spirit, flesh.  Out of symbol, reality.  We gather together as one, and our togetherness is holy.  We partake once more of the Last Supper, that final meal that extends through infinity.  And again we shed, continuously until the world is reborn, the holy blood.  A bit of saltine and grape juice becomes, for a moment, the substance of divine matter.  The simple act of eating bread and drinking wine becomes a labyrinthine alchemy that encapsulates all that is.  This is the Deep Magic, from before the dawn of time.

The Victory of Paul Over Christ

You know what?  It’s been a while since I sat down to write a good properly angry blog post, hasn’t it?

Well, that streak ends tonight, because by the blood of Christ I am angry right now.

Why?  At whom?  At what?  The target of my anger, o my brothers and sisters, can be found right here.  Ms. Jan Markell, of the Worldview Times, is on guard to protect us from the threat posed to Christianity by the words of Christ.

Read that essay.  Read it all, every single comically underlined word of it.  I’ll wait.  Because I want to talk about it, and I don’t want anybody to have to play catch-up.

All on the same page now?  Good.  Then let’s get to it.  What I see here is the message written across the shoulders of the rich young man after he turned his back on Christ because he couldn’t pass through the eye of a needle.

Hey! Anybody wanna say Brian Michael Bendis didn’t have the best run on Daredevil in the character’s history?

Because I will fight you, man!  I will jack you up!

I mean, yeah, Frank Miller’s run was magnificent, and Ed Brubaker is the freaking man, but you seriously want to tell me that anything tops Underboss and Out in terms of graphic storytelling?

And if anybody even breathes the name “Nocenti,” I will stab you.  Daredevil deserves better than being utilized as a strawman for polemics against meat-eating and nuclear weapons.  Anybody tries to defend the Typhoid Mary story arc to me, and I will punch you right in the goddamn face and then break your arm and jam the broken bone right into your nerve clusters, because that was some horseshit.

Hey, who wants to read some original fiction?

Sickness has taken me, in a minor way.  Of course, the condition of my meat suit has in turn affected the functioning of my mind, dependent as it is upon the complex workings of my delicious brainmeats.  Far be it from me, though, to let biological misery and attendant dementia stand between you and amusement and edification.  And so I’ve rooted around in my folder of first drafts for something to divert you.

I present, for your consideration, a brief dialogue, by way of being a sort of modern Mystery Play, that I like to call…

Waking up

Most people that know me can probably testify to the fact that I am I lazy person.  I am, in fact, an extremely lazy person.  If I could, I’d probably lie around naked reading comic books, watching horror movies and listening to weird, genre-defying music pretty much all day every day, with intermittent bouts of espresso-fueled binge-writing that last about eight or nine hours, followed by twenty hours of sleep.

This lifestyle is, sadly, impractical.  I need money to pay for wireless internet, comic books, whiskey, out-of-print treatises on vampirism, and food.  Also, no women are involved in it, and that’s a downside.  And since I still haven’t quite managed to earn a living and get dates using my knowledge of pre-war pulp fiction, action is needed.

Specifically, I need to wake myself up.

I work on the sixth floor of a seven-floor building.  I’ve stopped using the elevators.  Every day after work, I go down the stairs to the sub-basement parking garage, up the stairs to the roof, and then back down again.  Every night, I spend more than an hour walking.  As these things get easier, I’ll add more to them, working up to running.  Also sit-ups, push-ups and so forth.

After that, I write at least five hundred words of fiction every night.  Doesn’t have to be good, or coherent, but I need to get the habit of putting five hundred words down every day.  I aim to expand on that, too.

My diet’s been reassessed a little bit, too.  Small stuff, so far.  More fruit.  A lot more fruit.  I’m trying to drink a gallon of water every day, and avoid beverages with high fructose corn syrup (which is a lot harder than it should be, thank you very much corn lobby).

So far, I’ve done tolerably well at keeping to my resolutions.  I figure I’ll do better if I’m held accountable, which is why you get to hear about it.

Gentlemen, behold!

If you were wondering how various movie characters would fare in a Z-Day situation, you can now learn the scientifically calculated answer (unsurprising, John McClane’s the most effective zombie fighter cinema has to offer).

Jones Soda has totally made a collection of Dungeons & Dragons soda.  Yeah, I’m gonna have to get me some of that.

Sword-hilted umbrellas! Yes.Yes, I need all of those.

More Lebowski-related fun (we’re all clear by now on the point that anything Big-Lebowski-related is going to have a lot of F-bombs and shouldn’t be listened to at work, right?)

Tired of LOLCats?  Ready for the latest LOLBacklash?

Averagecats.com is there for you.

The Harry Potter money-making machine continues unabated, with the planned new theme park.  Somehow, there’s still no Dirty Harry themepark (tell me you couldn’t build at least one roller coaster around the theme of Sondra Locke getting sexually assaulted, to say nothing of the .44 Magnum Log Flume).

Sweet Zombie Moses, they’ve built a robot that can jump over 20-foot fences!  The Robot Uprising is surely inevitable now.  You bastards finally did it!  Damn you!  DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

Robert E. Howard Monday: Nerdrage

So the trailer for the new Solomon Kane movie is out.

And I am not well pleased.  I’ve come to terms with the fact that there’s never going to be a faithful adaptation of Red Shadows directed by Guillermo Del Toro and starring Michael Wincott, and I’ve had months now to try and come to grips with the nonsensical origin story they’ve cooked up for my favorite pulp hero, but even so I’d hoped for better than the Black Prince from A Knight’s Tale dressed up like Hugh Jackman from Van Helsing, swinging two cutlasses around in slow motion, and fighting the Golem boss from Castlevania.

Speaking of Van Helsing, I see from the Youtube comments, that endless black abyss of stupidity that God Almighty has forsaken and left to fester, that this movie has already given rise to the first generation of unreflective jerk-offs to whom Solomon Kane will be nothing but a crappy knock-off of an already-crappy knock-off.  For the record, anyone who says anything to me about Solomon Kane being a Van Helsing ripoff had best do it from a distance, or I will stab them right in the damn eye.

I can see exactly how this happened.  I have a blueprint detailing how this almost certainly happened, because I would bet real money that it’s pretty much the same process that turned Kull the Conqueror.  I strongly suspect that somewhere along the line, someone wanted to make an actual Solomon Kane movie, and then the project went into the studio sausage factory, with a sampling of the unrecognizable end result being this trailer.

I think I’ve given up hope for a Solomon Kane movie better than this:

A notable Christian of the 19th Century

His Imperial Majesty Norton I, Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico.

If you’re a Sandman reader, Discordian, or resident of San Francisco, you already know about Emperor Norton.  The first and only Emperor the USA ever had, he was a wise and benevolent monarch, a man of compassion and great spirit.

He wasn’t always an Emperor.  Once, he was a wealthy San Francisco businessman.  That life ended after a poorly timed attempt at cornering the rice market ruined him.  He declared bankruptcy, and began developing some marked eccentricities.  For a time, he left San Francisco.

When he returned, it was as a man with a purpose.  He issued a proclamation.

At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of S. F., Cal., declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.

NORTON I, Emperor of the United States.

His reign lasted more than two decades.

He dissolved the legislature, and both the Democratic and Republican parties, issued a decree ordering the US army to forcibly disband Congress.  Perhaps regrettably, these edicts were disregarded.

He also proclaimed:

Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word “Frisco”, which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars.

He also commanded the formation of a league of nations, ordered the construction of a bridge across the San Francisco Bay, and forbade conflict between religious sects.

He ate for free, of course, local restaurants regarding a plaque reading “by appointment of His Imperial Majesty” to be an honor well worth having.  He issued his own imperial currency, which was widely honored throughout the city.  He frequently associated with the two celebrated street dogs Bummer and Lazarus, who received all the consideration due to loyal imperial subjects.  Theaters and concert halls kept a seat reserved for him.

Anti-Chinese sentiments ran high in those days.  Bloody riots occasionally broke out.  And on one occasion, His Imperial Majesty happened to be conducting one of his inspections of the city when a particularly ugly one was building.

The Emperor stepped between his white subjects and their intended victims, his Chinese subjects.  He bowed his head, and began to pray.  He continued, reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over again, until the rioters gave up and went home.

Best mashup trailer ever? Best mashup trailer ever

Mark sent me this yesterday, because he knows what I like.

It makes more sense than you might think.  Both The Big Lebowski and Blade Runner are, of course, experiments in recontextualizing hard-boiled noir in the vein of Chandler.  Both are stories of men who just want to get on with their lives in peace, but cannot escape the intrigues of the shadowy figures using them as catspaws.  One just happens to be a stoner comedy while the other is science fiction.  And (by no coincidence, giving how passionately I love Raymond Chandler) they’re two of my favorite movies.

Also, Rutger Hauer saying “unt tomorrow ve come back unt ve cut off your johnson” is so perfect, it still doubles me over with laughter whenever I see it.

Attention, internet: I rule SO HARD

Last night, in a feverish haze of espresso and poorly dubbed kung fu movies, I completed the script for the break-out indy comics hit of 2010.  I speak, of course, of issue #1 of Thog-Dar: Caveman Detective.  At the dawn of the human race, a man is murdered by someone using the first bow ever made.  A mystified tribal chieftain and a baffled Lawkeeper (high priest of the Giant Ball of Fire In the Sky) have only one man they can turn to: Thog-Dar, a hard-boiled lone wolf who doesn’t play by the rules.  Thog-Dar, the inventor of crime scene investigation.  Thog-Dar, the first man in human history to grasp the concept of the alibi.  Thog-Dar, a man who walks fearlessly up to the first gangster in human history and punches him right in the face.  But even Thog-Dar may be in over his head, up against a killer who’s centuries ahead of his time when it comes to lethal weaponry.

And while I was doing that, I went ahead and touched up the other sure-fire hit of the next year, Black Flag.  Pirates!  Revenge!  Hidden treasure!  Necromancy!  Long conversations about the philosophy of anarchy!  17th-century profanity!  And will there be a sword fight on the deck of a burning ship, between two half-brothers whose hatred of each other can only be quenched by hot blood and cold steel?  You better believe it.

All that awesomeness, plus more, will be coming out of the Capstone Connection, the collective of Austin writers and artists who have banded together to rock faces off.  And the Connection is brought to you by Capstone Comics, the best comic book store in Austin.  Thanks to them, I’ve been able to see my visions of horrifically violent yet entirely justified revenge killings taking place in exciting historical venues brought to bold, bloody life on the page, and will soon be able to share that vision with the world.