Friday, July 7, 2023

Blackbraid II is Out!

 
From Blackbraid II, out today. You can order your copy from Blackbraid's Bandcamp HERE. I woke up this morning and I'm already on my second run-through on the album. Absolutely fantastic. 



Watch:

I'm not really a huge Blumhouse Horror guy. I mean, some of their stuff lands pretty well, but even those that do often feel at least partially flat. So, I've never watched The Nun, despite some interest generated when I heard the Colors of the Dark podcast say, "There's kind of a little Fulci movie buried in The Nun." Whether the overall film fails, hearing something like that makes it seem like watching the film would have to be worthwhile. Yet, it's been almost five years since its release, and I continue to abstain. Now there's a sequel, and I wonder if maybe that will finally prompt me to check that first one out.

 

I'm not trying to sound too cool for school here; there's nothing 'wrong' with Bllumhouse Horror. In fact, hell, they're pretty much singlehandedly responsible for keeping the genre afloat in big-box theatres in the early 10s. The first Insidious was a HUGE buoy for the post-torture porn theatrical Horror release, and through subsequent flicks like The Conjuring, Sinister, et al, Blumhouse has proven Horror to be a viable genre for theatres to continue to invest in, which is a good thing no matter how you cut it. Sometimes I feel like we're thIS close to Marvel being the only game in town - now that scares me. Anyway, as usual, I'm really overthinking whether or not I should watch The Nun, which is currently streaming on Max.




Sky:

It's been difficult for me to keep up with a lot of stuff I want to watch, and I've barely logged more than a couple hours on Puppet Combo's Stay Out of the House, because all I really want to do right now is sit in my backyard at night, drink beer and stare at the sky. So, I thought I'd try and share some of that here. 


This shot comes courtesy of K, who is even more enraptured by the phenomenon of having personalized access to such grandeur. As a native and life-long Angeleno until last August, it's easy to see how this would blow her away; in LaLaLand, there is no 'big sky;' your view is polluted by nothing but buildings, lights, billboards, etc. I don't want to take that away from L.A. - it is a city, and you go there for city things. Given the choice of staring at the Egyptian Theatre or the sky it occupies, I'll take the theatre. L.A.'s problem, like all problems, is that the ratio is out of whack.

But staring at the sky here at night, it's amazing to see the wonder that shines in K's eyes while we lay on our recently acquired gravity chairs (best investment!), sip our nightly poisons and just drink it all in with our eyes. This has given me a completely new perspective on a lot of things, and it's definitely helped mellow me a bit more of late. Hard to be high-strung when you're staring at the night sky.




Playlist:

Forhist - Eponymous
Testament - The New Order
Chamber of Screams, Clement Panchout & Mxxn - Murder House (Original Puppet Combo Soundtrack)
Drug Church - Hygiene
Mammon XV - Bleeding in Excess (single)
Pharmakon - Bestial Burden
Code Orange - Underneath
The Raveonettes - Raven in the Grave
Cash Money - Who Killed the Blues (single)



Card:


• Ten of Swords: Ruin
• XIII: Death
• XX: The Aeon

Lots of big ideas today, and they're breaking down the rational in the face of actually implementing them. 

Regarding Ten of Swords, I wanted to throw in something from Crowley's Book of Thoth: "The number Ten, Malkuth, as always, represents the culmination of the unmitigated energy of the idea. It shows reason run mad, ramshackle riot of soulless mechanism; it represents the logic of lunatics and (for the most part) of philosophers. It is reason divorced from reality."

I see bad information and dreams of grandeur that tempt away from the one path forward. This is all writing stuff, and I'm really picking up what the Cards are putting down today, as I draw in closer to writing the finale to the new novel. 



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