Dark Side of the Moon

And less than a whole week ago I thought the Levi Johnston pistachio commercial was the most tasteless thing I'd ever seen on television. Now I've seen the "make your boobs jealous" sneaker ad. One might say I don't watch enough television; in another, very real, sense I already see too much.

The kids have been playing Gears of War most of the time since B came home, and just now they report they beat the game. But when asked, they admit they did not sing the song.

My party piece:
I strike, then from the moment when the matchstick
conjures up its light,to when the brightness moves
beyond its means, and dies, I say the story
of my life -

dates and places, torches I carried,
a cast of names and faces, those
who showed me love, or came close,
the changes I made, the lessons I learnt -

then somehow still find time to stall and blush
before I'm bitten by the flame, and burnt.

A warning, though, to anyone nursing
an ounce of sadness, anyone alone;
don't try this on your own; it's dangerous,
madness.

Make over the alleys and gardens to birdsong,
The hour of not-for-an-hour. Lie still.
Leave the socks you forgot on the clothesline.
Leave slugs to make free with the pansies.
The jets will give Gatwick a miss
And from here you could feel the springs
Wake by the doorstep and under the precinct
Where now there is nobody frozenly waiting.
This is free time, in the sense that a handbill
Goes cartwheeling over the crossroads
Past stoplights rehearsing in private
And has neither witness nor outcome.
This is before the first bus has been late
Or the knickers sought under the bed
Or the first cigarette undertaken,
Before the first flush and cross word.
Viaducts, tunnels and motorways: still.
The mines and the Japanese sunrise: still.
The high bridges lean out in the wind
On the curve of their pinkening lights,
And the coast is inert as a model.
The wavebands are empty, the mail unimagined
And bacon still wrapped in the freezer
Like evidence aimed to intrigue our successors.
The island is dreamless, its slack-jawed insomniacs
Stunned by the final long shot of the movie,
Its murderers innocent, elsewhere.
The policemen have slipped from their helmets
And money forgets how to count.
In the bowels of Wapping the telephones
Shamelessly rest in their cradles.
The bomb in the conference centre's
A harmless confection of elements
Strapped to a duct like an art installation.
The Premiere sleeps in her fashion,
Her Majesty, all the princesses, tucked up
With the Bishops, the glueys, the DHSS,
In the People's Republic of Zeds.
And you sleep at my shoulder, the cat at your feet,
And deserve to be spared the irruption
Of if, but and ought, which is why
I declare this an hour of general safety
When even the personal monster -
Example, the Kraken - is dead to the world
Like the deaf submarines with their crewmen
Spark out at their fathomless consoles.
No one has died. There need be no regret,
For we do not exist, and I promise
I shall not wake anyone yet.

The following BPTP products, protos, and previews will be available at the Black Phoenix Trunk Show at Dark Delicacies on Sunday, November 29th, from 12-3pm:

PROTOTYPE BATH OILS AND ROOM SPRAYS
$25 each
Revenge Room Spray
Lola Montez Bath Oil
Grace Elliot Bath Oil
Champagne Bath Oil

RETIRED BATH AND ATMOSPHERE SPRAYS
$25 each
Lupanar Room Spray
Glacies Bath Oil
Jingu Bath Oil
Zenobia Bath Oil
Tomoe Gozen Bath Oil
Hua Mulan Bath Oil

RETIRED PERFUME OILS
$20 each
Boadicea Perfume
Jingu Perfume
Zenobia Perfume
Hua Mulan Perfume
Ysabel Perfume

PREVIEWS: PILLBOXES
$25 each
Courtesan Pillboxes (Four courtesans to choose from!)

PREVIEWS: THE DISTRICT / MOLLY CRABAPPLE ROOM SPRAYS
Proceeds go to Habitat for Humanity: New Orleans!
$30 each
Gertrude Dix’s
Pete Lala’s Café
Mahogany Hall

GC
Shot Glasses $15 each
Clocket $70 each
Triple Dagger Locket $70 each
Snow, Glass, Apples Locket $75 each
Brimstone Pendant $35 each
Triple Dagger Pendant $35 each
Bat-Woman Card Case $45 each
Triple Dagger Card Case $45 each
Salome Card Case $45 each
Dressed Thus Card Case $45 each
Leather Wrist Cuff $35 each

Where and when is this happening?

Dark Delicacies
4213 W. Burbank
Burbank, CA 91505 U.S.A.

Sunday, November 29
12pm - 3pm

1-888-DARKDEL
1-818-556-6660

darkdel *at* darkdel *.* com


On December 3rd, Dark Delicacies will be celebrating their 15th anniversary! 30% off most items (sale & consignment items not included) in the store… and CAKE! Bring in a new toy valued at $10 or more and get 40% off a single item that day. =)

The four new BPAL Dark Delicacies scents are live now on the DD web site! http://bit.ly/A640O

Yesterday, I did 1,315 words on "Exuvium," and found THE END. It's the 70th piece I've written specifically for Sirenia Digest since Issue No. #0 went out to subscribers in December '05.

Today (what's left of it), I'm going to take some time to rest. I've done two stories in as many weeks, and I'll have to spend the next two or three days getting #48 together and out the door. Then I have to get serious about Blood Oranges and...well, other stuff.

Here in Providence, it's still cloudy. A strong wind last night, the sort that sets my nerves on edge. We did have about ten minutes of sun yesterday, from 3:14 p.m. (CST) until 3:24 or so.

And I think I should probably make an effort to leave the house today.

Last night, we watched Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (2009). It's a peculiarly quiet, still film. After the first half hour or so, I realized that the film's minimal use of dialogue, the bleak Spanish countryside, bleaker halls of Modernist concrete architecture, and that omnipresent hush were all conspiring to create a suffocating sense of unease. All in all, I have mixed feelings about the film, and suspect I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it.

I think maybe the sun's trying to come out again...

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When I was young and bold and strong,
Oh, right was right, and wrong was wrong!
My plume on high, my flag unfurled,
I rode away to right the world.
"Come out, you dogs, and fight!" said I,
And wept there was but once to die.

But I am old; and good and bad
Are woven in a crazy plaid.
I sit and say, "The world is so;
And he is wise who lets it go.
A battle lost, a battle won-
The difference is small, my son."

Inertia rides and riddles me;
The which is called Philosophy.

- Dorothy Parker

With a resounding vote of 7-0, Lorine Niedecker joins the fold!

Considered the sole female poet of the Objectivist movement, Niedecker was noted for demonstrating how the personal could be approached in an objectivist style. Born in 1903, she was inspired by the 1931 Objectivist issue of Poetry to write its editor, Louis Zukovsky, with her poems. Out of this emerged a strong mentorship, yielding an eventual book in 1946, but most of her life was lived on the edge of poverty, and by her own estimation, one ten-year publication period yielded only six publication credits, in part due to her relative, geographical isolation from strong poetry communities. In the 1960s there was a revival of interest in her writing, and she responded in turn, producing a great deal of published work as well as unpublished manuscripts before her death in 1970. She asked for much of her unpublished work to be burned at death, and a friend honoured this request.

Welcome Niedecker!

Now on to the next sucker...

( Application )

Wonderful wind that makes the wires moan. I was walking under them--they were swaying and making ghostly sounds. In the white pines, the wind was hissing. In the bare trees, it was singing out waves and surf. It was flinging first one handful and then another of black birds into and across the sky--like pepper.

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( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

A few days ago I linked my image for the 2009 conbook cover, which I'll put here again:


MFF Conbook Cover 2009

(The building in that picture is the black one here, the name of which I do not know. That is one of the pictures I used as a reference for the key card image, though.)

And then I got to thinking and looked up the conbook cover I did for 2003, when I was Guest of Honor the first time:


MFF Conbook Cover 2003: Alysha Resplendent

I'm not a huge fan of cities, but for some reason, Chicago with its strong Art Deco influence says something to me, and whenever I draw anything related to Chicago or MFF that influence rises to the surface. Perhaps New York would inspire the same impulse; I've only seen New York briefly but what I did see was intense.

Anyway, we went downtown on Saturday evening to have dinner, and it was like... magic, I guess. Just as unbelievable to me as those storybooks full of snow and white Christmases, a glittering downtown full of people at night, with horse-drawn carriages in bumper-to-bridle traffic with cabs and stretch SUVs.



I have a sense now for why Georgia O'keeffe could spend so much time painting flowers and canyons... and then turn around and paint buildings and street lamps. I itch to do the same.


Stardancer Home.

I know it's just an ad for knock-off watches, but the phrase is rather glorious. I am tempted to set a competition: for the best poem or flash fiction on the theme of "submersible moonphase."

Nine

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Virginitiphobia
— The fear of rape.

by Patrick Ryan Frank

They took her out to the field in a new black truck
that smelled like apples and the denim

of a young man's thigh. They turned the engine off
but left the radio on, the headlights lighting

the woods to the west, toward the mountains, then
to California. They laid her down

and tied her hands over her head with field-grass.
She could have pulled them free, no problem,

ripped the roots right out of that soft dark dirt.
They told her she was beautiful.

( + )( + )

Hello,

Could anyone point me to some poems they enjoy that center around the theme of, or mention, monsters? Thank you.

Always I have been afraid
of this moment:
of the return to love
with perspective.

I see these breasts
with the others.
I touch this mouth
and the others.
I command this heart
as the others.
I know exactly
what to say.

Innocence has gone
out of me.
The song.
The song, suddenly,
has gone out
of me.

- from Monolithos: poems, 1962 and 1982

Okay. I'm running an apocalyptic horror campaign using the d20 Modern rules with the Sanity rules stolen from d20 Call of Cthulhu.

( Game-Specific Info... )

My question is, does anyone have any suggestions on how to maintain a horror atmosphere, both in-game and out? Any other suggestions or questions relating to mechanics, monsters, or just anything?