Necronomicon

Loved ones connect and families reunite as they discover there are things more powerful than death with the help of a very special book.

The Skeleton Dance

Spooky & adorable.

Happy Birthday Aleister Crowley!

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

                                                                   --Aleister Crowley

I'd like to take a moment to offer a memorial to a very strange man. Although considered by many to have been a Satanist and one of the worst people ever, he's exactly the sort of bad role model modern people could use. I tend to think he was exaggerating a tad about his depravity, but what do I know? Anyway, he was a bisexual lit major with occult proclivities who attracted dysfunctional women and wrote poetry. For some reason, I find that all dead fascinating. He also played chess, climbed mountains, and was also probably some kind of spy. He influenced plenty of very heavy music, and promoted sexual libertinism, drug use, meditation, yoga and seeing things for yourself.  He was probably the most interesting man in the world at one point, as well as a hot ballistic mess. And yes, some of the occult stuff is a put-on with a bunch of jokes about masturbation. 

I kind of recommend reading Uncle Al, though. He either believed in his own schtick or didn't. The point was the journey, anyway. (Go, do likewise. Or don't.)

(It was pronounced to rhyme with "holy", though.)

The Teeth of the Crocodile

So, I've been hearing about this krokodil drug that has now apparently hit the US--it rots people's flesh from the inside-out. This, right here, is how I know that I have no understanding of the addicted mindset. Because rotting from the inside out (or even the outside-in!) just seems like something that should be a sufficient deterrent to use. ("Hi, my name is Ivan and I'm going to be your pusher today. Can I interest you in some Krokodil? It has a high a lot like heroin but it's dirt cheap. Oh, and it could give you gangrenous abcesses that expose tendon and bone." "Um, gee, Ivan, I think I'm going to have to spend some more time with the menu. Do have anything good in meth?") I myself, I could never use something that gives you basically leprosy.

But that's just me. I remember those old anti-drug commercials where they used eggs as a demonstration:


That was dumb. You don't eat raw eggs, but fried eggs are delicious. It would make way more sense to say "This is a crackhead. This is a crackhead, on crack." And just show people how it really is. But today, we have "faces of meth" websites and people still use meth. And really, who do people get these drugs from? It's not like people never see people who been physically chewed up by the substances they use; it's like they just refuse to accept it personally. It can't happen to them, or, they feel like chasing the high is somehow worth the risk. But this particular drug? A flesh-eating drug? That's not a bad complexion day. That this is catching on is something of a horror to me, even beyond the Cannibal Bath Salt craze.

You might note I've opted to post a picture of actual crocodile teeth. You can look up pictures related to krokodil, the drug, if you like. I did. I'm kind of sorry about looking at them, though.

It Came From Beneath The Sea

So, it would probably not surprise my readers too much if I mentioned that I was pretty well influenced by H.P. Lovecraft regarding my estimation of what the creepiness threshhold might be.(HINT: the creepy is everywhere.) As a result, I'm sensitive to the idea the nature itself could be overturned and chaos could take over our expected pardigm of a happy, life-giving planet. I also would not be surprised if the "horror" came from the sea, just as life is supposed to have done. In fact, given that we use the oceans as our dumping ground, I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some horror from the sea that we should very well expect--and thus,  I find that I, like the folks at Grist, appreciate the plucky resolve of the humble jellyfish in their bid to shut down powerplants.

I don't know what it is about powerplants that has attracted the collective wrath of the mucosal marine menace, but I do know that, thanks to global warming, the jelly fish as a variety of lifeform has exploded in population. And I also know that most of our forms of energy have a baleful impact on the rest of the oceanic biota, especially in the form of acidification, which is outright harmful to corals, fish, the whole oceanic foodchain.

Could it be possible that, at this very simple level of evolution, the jellyfish boasts the complexity to follow orders and the simplicity to be subject to primal influences--perhaps originating from the planet, herself? Or, perhaps, some other, ocean-dwelling being(s) of greater complexity?

In other words, are the Deep Ones sending jellyfish into nuclear reactors to fuck shit up?

And if so, is it smart of us tool-using primates to send robots to do battle with them?



I welcome the eventual oceanic cybershoggothic overlords that will cap the oil wells and deliver retribution upon the overreaching monkeyfolks of the future. (No I don't. It sounds terrible. Let's don't provoke them.)

We Interrupt this Blog for An Advertisement That May be of Interest

It strikes me that October is Halloween Month, and I am momentarily fascinated by horrific things. Not ghosts, at present--I am reading Varney the Vampire, a Victorian Penny Dreadful, though, and most of my birthday booty included similarly spooky fare. I think for the next month I might undertake to regale you with things I find pertaining to dread and wonderful happenings. And suchlike boo bidness.

Do You Like Vampires and Movies? Kim Newman has Somethin' for ya.

I'm going to preface this by saying it does help a little if you are already a reader of Kim Newman's awesome takes on the supernatural, vampires, and alternate history through his other "Anno Dracula" tales and maybe his Diogenes Club stories as well (You guys! What I'm technically saying is you might like everything he writes!) But if you like movies and tv, and genre fiction--if you like subtle name-dropping and pastiche, if you like fast-paced stories and a developed fictional alternate history--and if you reaaaalllly dig vampires?

Oh, baby--this is for you. Because Newman covers the last quarter of the 20th century Hollywood style with some fangs for the memories, looking back through a cinematic lens while developing a story that will entertain as it chills. In it, the young get of Dracula slogs his way from the slums of Transylvania to the Hollywood stars, and there's no stopping him--or is there?

Well, you just have to read to see, and maybe you, too, will be aware of "the horror". I don't want to give away too much of the episodic doings that bring together characters from Anno Dracula novels past and some of the fixtures of moviedom's firmament, but it's good old fashioned disturbing social satire and art crit fun.