Red Flags Of Nowhere

 

One of the records that's going to just miss hitting my top ten of the year is Marilyn Manson's One Assassination Under God Chapter 1. Yeah, he's probably a reprehensible human being. I'm not sure why I'm making allowances for him when I don't for so many others, especially considering I didn't actually come around to being a Manson fan until sometime around 2000. I actually attended the first Ozzfest when MM toured for Antichrist Superstar and ignored him the entire time. And when I say I ignored him, I'm not just talking about his performance because apparently, he and Rose McGowan stood right next to me while watching Neurosis on the second stage, and I didn't even realize it until my buddy Jake told me later. I just side-eyed the goofy-looking couple, thinking, "Try a little harder, Gothy McGotherson." 

Anyway, I came around after reading two things Manson wrote in the late 90s. The first was his open letter rebuttal to the people blaming him for the Columbine massacre, published in Rolling Stone as an op-ed titled, "Columbine: Whose Fault is it?" His eloquence and vitriol made a deep impact on me because it was abundantly clear that this was a very intelligent human being. The second reading was Manson's Autobiography. 

Up until those two pieces, every interview I'd heard with the guy - none sought out, mind you - made him sound like a complete moron. Years later I would realize it all depends on who he wants to present on any given day. Anyway, I'm by no means a card-carrying fan. By this point, I haven't even heard most of his records. That said, AntiChrist and Mechanical Animals are fantastic records. In fact, while my life was disintegrating circa 2014-2015, Antichrist Superstar was one of the albums that helped me keep my head above water, to the point that the person who was ruining said life at the time actually began to get annoyed whenever she heard me listening to it. Maybe that's why I'm able to grant Manson's art the kind of separation I can't with other people. Despite the fairly ridiculous album title, every song on One Assassination is great, and this, the single... the lyrics just floor me, as his lyrics often do.

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Watch:

I finally saw Greg Araki's Nowhere and I fucking LOVED IT!

I'd previously seen Doom Generation way back when I rented the VHS from Blockbuster sometime in the late 90s and... yeah, I just didn't get it at the time. And Araki's films have been notoriously absent from streaming and disc for years, so now that Strand Releasing has remastered his "Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy," I'm finally getting a chance to take these in. And if Nowhere is any indication, I'm already blown away. 

There's so much of the 90s Zeitgeist in here; not just 90s pop culture aesthetic, but the angst of the era, because the 90s was a particular brand of angst, indeed. Centered around sexuality and aliens and the burgeoning tech world that, little did we know, would consume all other aspects of our society once we embraced it. That's all here. This is a very analog movie, but with the edges of tech creeping in slowly around the edges; whether it's snow-filled TVs stacked high like altars or playing across entire walls, kids nodding off on drugs enmeshed in the scaffolding of massive neon signs, or space aliens and their abduction rays, the flickering neon anxiety of Nowhere reminds me how the world was thirty years ago and how it felt to come of age at that time, while still being artistic and strange enough to make an impact on visual and dramatic aesthetics merits. If you ever wondered what it would have looked like if David Lynch and David Cronenberg collaborated on making Repo Man, here's the answer.

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Read:

I finished Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger last week. Excellent novella, and not what I would have expected from Mark Twain based on my previous experiences with his fiction, which occurred back in Grade School.

In my previous entry about this one, I used the cover image from an older edition simply to illustrate the tone of the story. The Wizard-looking bloke on that cover is one of the story's antagonists, the Astrologer, who goes to great lengths to put paid to several decent townsfolk who become embroiled in the seemingly innocent machinations of Satan, who is the titular Mysterious Stranger and assures the narrator that he's not that Satan, but another angel with good intentions.

Yeah. Haha. Right. 

The book has some very subtle, very disturbing moments of pure Horror, most of which revolve around Witch panic and burnings, and the overall commentary Twain uses Satan to deliver about the human race is chilling in its unflattering accurateness. This is definitely not what most people think of when they think of Mark Twain's fiction.

Next, I circled back to finish James Joyce's Dubliners - a book I've had on the shelf since probably sixth grade. 

I'd left off at about the halfway point back in June and, upon returning, blew through several stories on Saturday, depositing me on the banks of the final entry, The Dead for my Sunday reading. This is arguably the most famous story in the collection and the only piece I remember having previously read in this volume.  These slice-of-life vignettes are beautiful for the elegant prose Joyce is known for, and I very much enjoyed them. Reading this one is a a bit of work-up to see if I'm finally going to undertake reading Ulysses this year, a daunting work I've been wanting to read for two decades. The author's prose in Dubliners fascinates me, so I'm thinking yes, I am going to try and take that leap this year. When I do, believe me, I'll be chronicling the experience here. But that's not happening just yet. I'm closing the year out by reading through the three issues of Hellebore I recently ordered online and thinking about fitting in one last novel, although what that is, I cannot yet say.

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Playlist:

The Devil's Blood - The Thousandfold Epicentre

Metallica - Master of Puppets

Shellac - To All Trains

Exhalants - Atonement

Ministry - HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES

Fvnerals - Let the Earth Be Silent

Mrs. Piss - Self-Surgery

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

Faith No More - Album of the Year

Pitch Black Manor - Halloween Scene 

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God Chapter 1

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Urge Overkill - Saturation

Saigon Blue Rain - Oko

Fen - Epoch

Steve More - Christmas Bloody Christmas OST

Willie Nelson - Pretty Paper

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Morphine

 

From 2000's The Night, Morphine's final album. Excellent track to close out their discography and career, even if their end came way too early. I'm realizing tonight that this past July 3rd marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mark Sandman's death. Twenty-five years... 

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Watch:

Seeing that Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury's new film The Soul Eater hit VOD yesterday made me extremely excited. I didn't even know they had a new film on the way. 

There is no way I'm posting a trailer here; this film is NOT what you think it's going to be, and I can only imagine the trailer will give something away. Regardless, if you're a fan of Bustillo and Maury's work (Inside, The Deep House, Livid, Among the Living), I think you'll agree The Soul Eater is a worthy addition to their body of work. If you're unfamiliar, give it a shot. These guys make really great Horror films, and Simon Roca's cinematography is fantastic to boot!

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Playlist:

Nirvana - Dive (single)

NIN - Year Zero

Crippled Black Phoenix - The Wolf Changes Its Fur But Not Its Nature

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Amigo the Devil - Yours Until the War is Over

Drug Church - Prude

Ozzy Osbourne - Patient No. 9

Me and That Man - New Man, New Songs, Same Shit Vol. 1

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Morphine - The Night

Prince - Sign O' the Times

The Bangles - Angels Don't Fall in Love (B-side to Walk Like an Egyptian single)

Smashing Pumpkins - Drown (single)

Sonic Youth - Washing Machine

ten Athlone - Street Trash (single)

Dreamkid - Daggers

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Card:

Today's card for study is XVII: The Star:

Yeah, I know I usually kind of poke fun at Crowley's writings on these cards, but this is one I actually really like his entry for. Nuith - the Lady of the Stars. Allow me to quote directly from The Book of Thoth:

"The Universe is here resolved into its ultimate elements... Behind the figure of the goddess is the celestial globe. Most prominent among its features is the seven-pointed star of Venus, as if declaring the principal characteristic of her nature to be Love. From the golden cup she pours ethereal water, which is also milk and oil and blood, upon her own head, indicating the eternal renewal of the categories, the inexhaustible possibilities of existence."

This is everything. I've come to realize that while the Thoth Trumps build toward the climax of Crowley's Magickal worldview, to me, The Star is the essence of life. Maybe not of reality, but of life as we know it as humans. Perpetual renewal. The image shows Nuith, the cosmic mother, essentially bailing the waters of life over herself. She is literally awash in the essence of life. This is a coded representation of humanity - we're supposed to renew. To bail. Instead, we situate and stagnate. This card is a reminder to live Life. 

From the Girmoire: "Create unto and within yourself a Universe, shaped of your strengths and built upon your accomplishments as a foundation."

Squirrel Nut Zippers Live 28 Years Later!

 

Oh man! Mr. Brown steered me to this one the other day, and it's fucking EPIC. Reminds me how much I love this band. I need to get Hot! on vinyl like yesterday! Also, serves as a great reminder to pull out their Christmas album.

 

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NCBD:

This week's pull list has some pretty exciting titles in it:

One name sums up my absolute excitement for this issue: BRUTICUS!!! I am a huge fan of the Combaticons, and seeing them dart in and out of the last few issues, I knew this couldn't be far away.

Loving Jeff Lemire's new series Minor Arcana so far, but then, I've really come to appreciate these books where he writes and does the art. His style is very distinct and very mature, i.e. he's been doing it long enough that it really feels 'complete.'

This is another new, limited Batman series. Here's the solicitation from League of Comic Book Geeks:

"Set during the early years of Batman's career, Batman: Dark Patterns delves into four mysterious cases as he attempts to cement his place as Gotham City's protector while the city itself fights back against him. This is the Dark Knight Detective at his most stripped-down core, a man relying on his wits, his skills, and little else as he tackles some of the most twisted mysteries Gotham City and its protector have ever encountered. Case 01: We Are Wounded A series of sickeningly gruesome murders has sent shock waves through Gotham. Are these the random works of a serial killer, or is there something more sinister at play? Batman attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery before any more victims are claimed."

Sounds pretty cool, eh? Definitely worth giving a shot, at the very least.

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Watch:

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's 28 Years Later got a trailer yesterday and there was no way I wasn't going to watch it, despite the fact that between now and the summer 2025 release date, I expect to be inundated with this trailer ad nauseam.

I'm a huge fan of the first two films in this series, and despite the usual disdain I hold for late-coming sequels, I'm pretty excited about this. It feels natural, not like a cash grab. 

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Playlist:

Sumerlands - Dreamkiller

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Orville Peck - Bronco

Bluekarma - The Communication

Anthrax - Among the Living

Anthrax - State of Euphoria

This Movie Saved My Life Podcast - Alien

Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger

Blood Incantation - Absolute Everywhere

High on Fire - Cometh the Storm

Better Lovers - Highly Irresponsible

Ministry - HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES

Justin Hamline - The House With Dead Leaves

Double Life - Indifferent Stars E.P.

Ulver - Liminal Animals

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Five of Swords

• Page of Pentacles

• XI: Justice

Good will comes from finding a truce, and finding the truce comes from recognizing the "Lunar Pull" - Read: obscured influences - on seemingly unconnected processes. I'm not really sure how this applies to my daily life at the moment, but as always, it's good to approach the day with this in mind and see what reveals itself. 

Out Whole World, Smoke and Mirrors

 

I haven't listened to Thievery Corporation or, more importantly, The Mirror Conspiracy in a long time. I read an article a couple years ago that talked about how Rob Garza and Eric Hilton shouldn't be held responsible for the "Coffeehouse Chillwave" muzak that their style created. I don't know - maybe they can, maybe they can't. Doesn't matter to me. I can tell you that after discovering The Mirror Conspiracy back in 2000/2001, I quickly became obsessed. I waited anxiously for the 2002 follow-up The Richest Man in Babylon and then again for 2005's The Cosmic Game, which is when they officially jumped the shark for me. Looking back at Babylon (which is Apple Music's only "Essential Album" on the group's discography), I can't say I really care about that one, either. For me, The Mirror Conspiracy is "the work that transcends the genre," and plugging into it last night, I was happy to find it still carried the same weight. I was in desperately in need of something to mellow me out, and this did the trick and kind of recaptured my mind with that same fascination it did going on twenty-five years ago.

No small feat.

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Watch:

I bought most of the Cohen Brothers' filmography on DVD during the '00s, and one film I could never find was 1994's The Hudsucker Proxy. I previously saw this film one time circa 1997, and after that, it just kind of hung around the outskirts of my Cohen list. During my aforementioned Cohen DVD purchasing expeditions, I never once saw this film on a store's shelf and would still swear I'd read it never made it to DVD, but a quick glance at the internet tells me that was either short-lived or erroneous. Either way, eventually, I resigned it to a kind of lost-to-the-aether list, what Mr. Brown referred to in a recent text as The Secret Cohen list. As hyperbolic as that might sound to some ("How could such big names in Hollywood have a cache of lost or secret films?"), this moniker instantly struck me as exactly right. Hudsucker, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Lady Killers, Crime Wave (which, like Hudsucker, the Cohens wrote with Sam Raimi, but in Crime Wave's case, Raimi directed)... yes, there is definitely a 'Secret' Cohen Brothers list. Now that I've established that, at least for my own purposes, let's get back to The Hudsucker Proxy because I hadn't seen this in twenty-seven years before Friday night when I saw it on the Criterion Channel. 

We ended up watching Hudsucker Friday night and again on Saturday, this time with K's Mom and my folks after a family dinner. This film is just fantastic; seriously wondering if this might rank higher than Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing or The Big Lebowski. I mean, this film is dynamite.

Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Leigh smolder when they're not running rings around each other in dialogue, and Paul Newman chews the scenery in the best way possible. That voice! Never mind John Mahoney and Bruce Campbell pitching in to make this one of the the fastest dialogue sharks since Double Indemnity. And they even manage to throw in a literal Deus Ex Machina and a catwalk fight and not ruin the film. 

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Playlist:

Horrendous - Ontological Mysterium

Drug Church - Prude

Zeal and Ardor - GREIF

Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere

Turnstile - GLOW ON

Antibalas - Where the Gods Are In Peace

Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time Are Vast

Thievery Corporation - The Mirror Conspiracy

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She

Pilot Priest and Electric Youth - Come True OST

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Blood Incantation - The Stargate

2019's Hidden History of the Human Race put Blood Incantation on a lot of people's radar, mine included. I dug the record, but probably not as much as the legions that ranked it as or near their album of the year. Since then, they'd fallen off, as I'm not even certain I knew they had a 2022 record (Timewave Zero; named after Terence and Dennis McKenna's theories of novelty and emergence, which I was once obsessed with). Recently, Mr. Brown mentioned these guys had a new one, so I sought out this year's Absolute Everywhere on Apple Music earlier today and gave it a listen. Then I went looking for a track to post and saw I had no actual idea how ambitious this band is. Holy shit. Tangerine Dream? Michael Ragen, DP for Panos Cosmatos' The Viewing? Knights? Space Ships? Cosmic Horror???

What the absolute fuck? There are moments on this album that are among the heaviest things I've heard, and moments that remind me of 90s electro-psychedlic group The Orb. Mind thoroughly blown.

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Watch:

Holy smokes! Steven C. Miller's Werewolves hits theatres this weekend, and after seeing it Thursday night, K and I are both chomping at the bit to see it again! A LOT OF FUN!!

This movie 100% knows what it is, shortcomings and all, and just leans into it. There's a lot of macho shit in the opening few moments, which rubbed me a bit wrong at first. Then there's a scene where Grillo's character is introduced as a Micro Biologist, and I suddenly understood the M.O. here - Werewolves is essentially a Stallone flick from the mid-80s, and realizing that freed me to embrace it for the insane ride that it is. Once we move past the handful of transformations we see - remember the set up here is that a Super Moon is going to cause BILLIONS of people to become werewolves for one night - most of the FX are gloriously practical. 

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Playlist:

Final Light - Eponymous

Dance with the Dead - Dark Matter E.P.

Dance with the Dead - B Sides: Vol. 1

Drug Church - Prude

Sort Sol -w/ Chelsea Wolfe - Life Took You For A Freq. (single)

Sylvaine - Nova

Fen - Epoch

Ulver - Liminal Animals

Antibalas - Where the Gods Are in Peace

Moon Wizard - Sirens

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja

Windhand - Eponymous

Shellac - To All Trains

Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun

Sumerlands - Dream Killer

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Card:

Today's card:

Here are two little bits from the Grimoire:

"Intense passion to create, but its children are monsters."

And the equally intriguing, if far more vague:

"The Darkness of the Raging Sea."

The second bit is an obvious observation from The Book of Thoth, truncated from Crowley's meaningful (less?) meanderings about the background of the card's image. To me, the "Seven-ness" of this card hits the lights first; completion. But this is a warning, and that's to "Understand the solutions" you employ to achieve that solution, as you may solve one issue and create something worse, hence the choppy waters.

Ulver - Hollywood Babylon (haha)

I have no idea how to process the new Ulver record, Liminal Animals. The haunting atmospherics and Black Metal asides are gone in favor of... 80s keyboard lounge? What the absolute fuck? I played the entire record through with my jaw firmly agape, and then I hit track #6, "Hollywood Babylon," and thought, "this has to be a piss-take." But looking around online, I don't think it is.

Admittedly, there's a whole slew of Ulver's career I have no experience with, and reading around online a bit, Liminal Animals appears to be part of a long evolution. I made it all the way through the record, and while I still have trouble reconciling this being the same band that did 

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NCBD:

Small pull this week:

Once again, I seriously forgot about this book until seeing it pop up again. There have been a number of recent series that have kind of etched it into my brain that long-form is dead; the best books are those that get in and get out. Not to say the opposite isn't true, but when you take a book like The Walking Dead - possibly the last long-form series not Big Two I read and loved, it did not suffer from all the hiatus breaks. I really feel like that is killing some series for me. That said, I've hung in this long and enjoyed WTFPFH?, and I'm not going anywhere now. 

Apparently I got in on this one right at the end; Issue Five is the last solicited for the time being. I never did find issues 1-3, so I can only judge by last month's issue 4. I dig Cruel Universe, but maybe not as much as I do Epitaphs From the Abyss. 

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Watch:

Noirvember may be over, but K and I have been so impressed with the selection on the Criterion Channel that I renewed the subscription, and we continued our Noir playlist with Otto Preminger's 1944 masterpiece Laura. 

One of the main characters here is named Waldo Lydecker. If you're a Twin Peaks fan, you know my ears instantly perked up at this. Obviously, David Lynch and/or Mark Frost dig this film. Totally see why. What a fantastic Whodunit. There's a stubbornness to Dana Andrew's Detective Lt. Mark McPherson is extremely gratifying to witness as you go down the rabbit hole on this, ahem, "Who killed Laura" case. And for her own part, Gene Tierney's Laura is fantastic as the victim. Also, Vincent Price is almost unrecognizable as a kind of high-society infiltrating rube - his voice is the giveaway.

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Playlist:

Black Pyramid - The Paths of Time are Vast

Melvins - Tarantula Heart

Shellac - To All Trains

Various - Learn to Relax! A Tribute to Jehu

The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

Venamoris & Dave Lombardo - Winter's Whisper (single)

Venamoris - Drown in Emotion

Ulver - Liminal Animals

Dreamkid - Eponymous

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Card:

Today's card for study is the Prince of Disks.

I don't have much in the ol' Grimoire for this one, and what I do have doesn't exactly add up. Let's look at what Crowley has to say... okay, that's a bit of astrological gobbledegook, too. Let me see if I can parse some of this down.

To start, both my own notes and A.C.'s start with "The Airy aspect of Earth." Okay, now my notes are becoming a little clearer; as I'd written, "Swords (Air) for pragmatism can be a bit of a cunt for matters pertaining to money and stability."

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I asked an intercontinental moving company for a Clarksville to Melbourne, Australia quote yesterday...

Consulting another text I sometimes use to interpret Thoth, Hajo Banzhaf and Brigitte Theler's Keywords for the Crowley Tarot, I see references to cycles, and that immediately makes sense; this card reminds us that we go through our micro versions of the planet's macro Seasons. The Bull is fertility and power. Cycles don't imply stability, and that gels with my comment above. The important thing here is to realize this card is a pinion card; it works best read in a chronology with other cards.

Reconciling My Love of Siamese Dream w/ My Hatred for Mr. Corgan

I have to preface the following piece by saying up front, there is no way to properly quantify how much I revile The Smashing Pumpkins and, specifically, the man at the heart of the group. I don't want to be unnecessarily mean to anyone, not even some "rock star" I don't personally know, but if I'm going to discuss them in any kind of positive light, my "hate disclaimer" needs to come first. My feelings are strong enough that I would never want to be mistaken for a fan. Why? Because everything the band has done since Siamese Dream is literal anathema to me. So much so that I stopped paying any kind of attention to them over a decade ago but their continued existence still pisses me right the fuck off!

Over the weekend, K and I drove to Dayton, Ohio to visit her Grandmother. As has become our habit on road trips, we fired up Yacy Salek's Podcast Bandsplain. Scrolling the list of episodes, we eventually chose the two-part Smashing Pumpkins deep-dive. 

I know very little about the Pumpkins post-Meloncollie (sorry billy, not spelling it your way), and what little I gleaned about that magnum stain upon release has long since been recorded over in my memory banks. Because of this, I figured the episode would be equally enlightening, justifying and, of course, hysterical. Salek has already demonstrated her own penchant for taking corgan with a grain of salt on the Soundgarden deep-dive we listened to last month, so I figured, let's hear what someone who likes the music but not necessarily the artist thinks. 

Upon finishing the first installment, K and I drove around Dayton listening to Siamese Dream, and something clicked. I realized that, for all intents and purposes, the corgan who wrote Siamese Dream (and Gish) left this existence in 1994 and was replaced by some kind of doppelgänger cooked up in a corporate lab. This idea felt like a new approach to settle the cognitive dissonance I've had about embracing this record again after all this time.

When Siamese Dream hit record stores in 1993, it immediately became one of my favorite albums of all time. I cannot stress how much this album colored my final year in High School. The music was perfect for a burgeoning stoner and his high school stoner sweetheart; my black-clad girlfriend and I listened to it obsessively, interwoven betwixt all the Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer we thrived on at the time. It's big, fuzzy sonic boom and soft, lilting aquatic passages marked our days and nights and quickly became interwoven in my memories. The song "Disarm," in particular, hit at a time when a friend was arrested and eventually convicted of murdering a younger girl in our group. While "Disarm" has since become emotionally ubiquitous for the general population, its effect will likely always remain strong for me. I have such a strong emotional association between it and the horror and frustration I felt at that time. Hearing it now conjures a balm from thirty years ago. At a time when my life and understanding of the world was crumbling around me, this band seemed to have some kind of parallel. That felt like everything. 

That said, I'm choosing to post the track "Hummer" today because, as Salek points out during her episode, this track is often overlooked. In fact, listening to this masterpiece again with fresh ears, I'd say it might just be the best - or at least my favorite - song on the record. 

Playing this record several times over the weekend - and in fact, even now while I type this - I'm shocked at how much I love it. A lot of my life as a music fan has involved figuring out ways to continue relationships with music made by artists who eventually reveal themselves to be cunts. There is no better example than The Smashing Pumpkins. There is zero chance I'll ever connect with anything after this album (see what I did there?), but I'm taking this one back (However, I have said that before).

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Watch:

Let's lighten the mood. You know, there was a lot of talk about the Netflix Menendez Brothers movie this year. Tabloid true crime isn't my jam, but for my money, there's only one movie about that particular case:

I laughed so hard I cried. This Letterman YouTube channel is one of my favorite finds of the year. I'm not very YouTube savvy, so every time I see a video like this, I try to remind myself that, at this point the streaming giant is essentially our social memory of the last forty or fifty years. Everything is on it. 

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Read:

Over the extended weekend, I had my first chance to really sit down and read in a while, so I was finally able to finish IvyTholen's Mother Dear. The fact that this is the second novel Ivy has published this year makes me think she's something of a superhero, as Mother Dear is just as tightly paced and joyously readable as her other novels. The characters were extremely well designed, but by their nature, anathema to me; however, that didn't keep me from rocketing through this one once I got a few hours to actually focus on it again. 

Next up is Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger:

This is not the edition I'm reading. However, this is one of the illustrations from inside the book, and I LOVE it so much that I couldn't pass up using it to represent this nefarious novella. The Mysterious Stranger begins in Austria during the winter of 1590 and is narrated by one of three boys who begin a casual friendship with an Angel named Satan. Now, never mind that the Angel tells them he is not THE Satan, the boys find themselves swooning for this charming being who hands out money and favors like it's nothing at all. Satan also talks down about the Human Race every chance he gets (can't really blame him, even all these years later). At the heart of the boys' education and the Stranger's criticisms is The Moral Sense, Humanity's inbourne conceit that they can determine what is right and what is wrong (not between what is right and what is wrong). The way Twain writes the characters and scenarios is subtle enough to completely belie the fact that there are some absolutely horrifying ideas here. At one point, the narrator touches on the recent spate of Witch burnings, including an incident where eleven children were burned. It's bafflingly scary and definitely deserves way more recognition as a work of Literate Horror Fiction than it gets.

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Playlist:

Spoon - They Want My Soul

Marilyn Manson - One Assassination Under God, Chapter 1

Ministry - HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES

Bandspain Podcast - The Smashing Pumpkins Part 1

My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade

The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

The Smashing Pumpkins - Zero (single; for shit-talking purposes only. I hate this song)

Bandsplain Podcast - The Smashing Pumpkins Part 2

Best Coast - Boyfriend (single)

Radiohead - Kid A

The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead

NIN - Not the Actual Events

NIN - Add Violence

NIN - Bad Witch

NIN - Year Zero

The Knife - Shaking the Habitual

Crystal Castles - II

Entropy - Dharmak​ā​ya 

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Card:

From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.

• Page of Wands

• Six of Wands

• Seven of Wands

That's a lot of Wands. So what is this trying to tell me as I come off a long weekend and a small road trip? Wands are all about WILL, so I instantly read this as an instruction to knuckle back down, apply the will and finish the book. I am SO close now; on the final Grammarly edit, but only about 40% of the way through reading it out loud to K. After that, I'll send it to my trusted Beta Reader, wait to hear back and make any changes she suggests that will help the overall book. But I am extremely happy so far, and have considered shopping this around to publishers. We'll see.