New Swans!!!

New music from Swans! From the forthcoming album The Beggar, out June 23rd on Young God Records. Pre-order HERE.

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Watch:

One of the things that saved my sanity over the last few days of my recent two-week stint in LaLaLand was getting stoned at my hotel one night and discovering Bobby Fingers had released his new Diorama video. The subject of Mr. Fingers' machinations this time?

 

There is a level-up in this video that absolutely blew me away, and that's all I'll say. Well, besides confirming that Bobby Fingers is now my favorite anything on the internet. Watching these literally helped quell the total disgust for humanity that arose in me while stationed in LaLaLand this time.

 

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Plastic:

I have to confess that I've become one of the many disillusioned Hasbro Pulse fans. The company's entire manner of doing business is just disgusting. Due to this, and because I've cut my nerd-spending in half, there have been quite a few recent releases from their GI JOE Classified and Transformers lines that I want but have ultimately passed on. That said, here are a few I did allow myself to splurge on:

Copperhead is one of my all-time favorite characters, and this redesign is spot-on perfect in my opinion.

I don't know anything about Range Vipers, and this is obviously a rather "Sci-Fi" figure - an approach I do not normally appreciate in the series, but as a straight-up horrific-looking action figure, this thing is rad AF. Look at that brain!!!

This last one I actually have not yet ordered but am on the fence. One of the issues I (and a lot of other collectors) have with Pulse is their insane price markup. I've had Scrap Iron in my cart on their site for a few weeks now and, although this guy was one of my favorites of the original series' earliest figure designs AND a figure I never had as a child, this figure's pull is strong. I loved the character in Larry Hama's comics - that scene where he blows up the station wagon with the Soft Master, Billy and Mr. Coffee-in-my-Brandy has always stayed with me. That said, when you're at checkout and see a final cost of $57 for one figure, well, that's just INSANE, regardless of whether or not it comes with a 'vehicle' like old Iron's anti-tank drone. Magic eightball says I'll probably end up ordering this, but it irks me nonetheless. 

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Playlist:

The Veils - Total Depravity

King Woman - Celestial Blues

King Woman - King Woman on Audiotree Live EP

Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Godflesh - Pure Live

The Police - Regatta de Blanc

Silent - Modern Hate

Savages - Silence Yourself

Neverly Boys - Dark Side of Everything

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Card:

From Missi's Raven Tarot:

I turn 47 today, and in light of this event, I wanted to pull a card from Missi's Raven Tarot as a sort of "Card for the year." Makes sense I would see The High Priestess, as I feel like she has been lurking in quite a few of my dailies of late. 

From the Grimoire:

"Can denote change and/or fluctuation. Matter or situation shaped by gracious or pure influences. The Priestess taps into the power of Life and the Universe."

All of which is to say - or at least in my interpretation - I will have a year where I continue to shape my future. Sounds boring, but as anyone who has changed their life for the better multiple times and is generally unafraid to do so at the drop of a hat, it's not easy. Nor is continually affecting my own creative force, honing these lumbering documents of a novel that is hard A.F. to write, but ultimately rewarding A.F. when it begins to come together.

Here's to the voyage to 48!!!

The Bagman Cometh

Heaven is an Incubator posted the new album by Spain's Calderum. I'd never heard of these guys (this guy?) before, or the idea that anyone was meshing Black Metal with Dungeon Synth. I mean, talk about a sound you didn't know you wanted but you've been anticipating for years!

You can pre-order the Vinyl like I did, or the cassette from Death Prayer Records in the UK, just head over to Calderum's Bandcamp HERE.

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Write:

I just posted a story called The Bagman Cometh over on the Horror Amino app. I had a lot of fun doing this one, and a longer version will ultimately be included in my forthcoming FREE short story collection Its Soil Be Murder. To read the current version, go HERE. 

The piece is a mashup of random pictures from my phone, all used to prompt the story. I really dig this one; it plays with the whole Creepy Pasta/Urban Legend thing, while also bringing back a character from a short story I wrote waaaaay back in the early 00s but still need to publish. Maybe I'll put that in the Free Collection as well.

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Back:

Hasbro Pulse began a new Haslab campaign yesterday, and unfortunately, I caught wind of it early enough that I have about a week to struggle with whether or not to cough up $299 to back this:

Christ. One of my all-time favorite figures, the HISS Driver, working treads and the kicker? That fucking working beacon. 

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Playlist:

Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands

Krallice - Demonic Wealth

Black Sabbath - Eponymous

Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Undreamable Abysses

Ruby Friedman Orchestra - Fugue in La Minor (single)

Pink Milk - Ultraviolet

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

Various - The Void OST

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Card:

Reminding me to make completely 'Scientific' decisions tomorrow at the home inspection; I must not succumb to emotion for or against the move. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, we go back to LaLaLand and start a new plan.

Isolation: Day 199

Musick:

I spent the previous two nights re-watching the 1986 Transformers Animated Movie. The first night, I had it on and, halfway through, K came in and sat down. I was tired, wasn't able to finish, and was totally stoked when, last night, she professed a desire to watch the entire thing with me. 

I didn't realize it as a kid, but one of the things about the Transformers cartoon that I still love to this day is just how much the creators borrow from Jack-Kirby once the movie was released. The continuity's jump from mostly Earth-bound events to a lot of deep space locations all have a distinctly "Kirby-esque" feel, and Unicron, well, an obvious loving homage to one of Kirby's greatest celestial creations, Galactus. Which leads me to ask the question that now occurs to me for the first time: Who would win in a fight, Unicron or Galactus?

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Play:

Confession: I spent too much $$$ on some toys recently. I have certain weak spots, and I've psychoanalyzed myself enough to know that because as I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of money and I often couldn't have the figures or toys that I wanted, I've been more than willing to buy some of this stuff as an adult. Plus, the toy tech is so awesome now that all these figures look like they did in the comic or cartoon; gone is the edict that to make a toy 'playable' it can't look like it's supposed to. Case in point, the Hasbro Pulse website has been both a blessing and a curse since I recently discovered it. I've ordered a few of the new GIJoe: Classified figures - they all look amazing - but last week I upped my involvement by paying to get into the premium tier so I could grab these two little gems, both 'exclusives' at the virtual Pulsecon 2020 event:

The cost of all this wasn't too insane - a little over $100 - but seriously, it's like someone pulled the Quintesson Judgement Pit right of my 10-year old Shawn's cranium. I had NO control (this was also reflected by the Lust Card yesterday, I believe, but it was too much to go into for yesterday's post).

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Playlist:

Type O Negative - Life is Killing Me 

Fields of the Nephilim - The Nephilim 

Fields of the Nephilim - Elizium 

Deftones - Ohms 

The Smith - The Queen is Dead 

Arthur Ahbez - Gold

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Card:

The good ol' Princess of Disks pops up again. I feel as though I've seen this one a lot lately. Today, I get the impression this is intimating I need to look for practical solutions to a certain hink in my narrative for Shadow Play: Book Two.