EDiH: 2014-2020.

by William D. Tucker. 

Every Day Is Halloween

I pull on this costume

'Til I break it in.

Take it off before I go to work,

Of course,

But then there came a time

When I just kept it on.

I was kinda depressed, to tell you the truth.

Hard to care about bathing properly,

Flossing, brushing, soap stuff.

But terror twisted my guts at the thought of missing work.

Getting fired.

Having no money.

Not being able to eat.

Eviction.

Now I'm one of those people standing on the side of the road with a cardboard sign.

One of those people that no one cares about.

Because no job, no money, no clean clothes, no status, zeroed out of reality.

Except as a kind of living breathing object lesson

To all the workers.

So I decided I would just go to work with the costume on.

Sure, it was a rebellious thing.

A fuck you kind of thing.

Even though I got along with everybody at work.

The customers were all right, discounting a few hard-ons here and there.

My boss, Becky, she was always cool to me.

It was the routine, the structure, the day-after-goddamn-day-ness of it

That I despised, I think.

So I decided I would just go to work with the costume on.

And nobody said anything.

It was one of those deals where you do that one fucked-up thing,

And you're expecting to get punished for it,

And you're terrified,

But you're also kind of looking forward to being confronted about it, punished,

Especially at work, right?

But the first time I did it

My whole shift making those sugary, syrupy caffeinated coffee beverages

I'm waiting for my boss to give me shit.

But it's like nothing.

I hit every order just right.

I'm greeted by all the usual customers,

I say the expected lame non-funny funny remarks I'm supposed to say,

And laugh at the expected lame non-funny funny remarks my fellow employees say in response,

Just like any other day.

And then my shift ends.

Before, I made a ritual out of going back to my apartment,

Lighting some candles to the spirit of Tom Snyder at the homemade altar,

Stripping out of my work clothes,

Blowing out the candles, singing a praise hymn to Tom Snyder,

Pulling on the costume,

One last prayer to Tom Snyder,

And going out and getting in fist fights and knife fights

With the same old gang of assholes downtown.

We'd been mixing it up like that for about six years or so,

But it seemed more like decades.

We packed all kinds of insane feuds, betrayals, and lunatic ideologies into those days.

I think we started out with some kind of half-sensible rationale for why we were doing it,

But that got lost,

Hmm,

Probably by the end of the third day or so.

Maybe the fourth day.

I don't really remember. Not sure I want to.

So up until that day,

I had my ritual.

Knew exactly what I was going to do with myself every moment of every day.

But that day

I already had my costume on,

So I didn't need to even go inside my apartment.

I just went straight downtown,

Muttered some quick prayers and a mini-hymn to Tom Snyder under my breath,

And immediately jumped on some dude I'd punched and kicked and stabbed a thousand times before.

Only this time

My beloved target

Was possessed of preternatural strength,

And beat the holy glowing feces out of me a thousand ways to Sunday.

One of the best times I ever had.

So I just kept coming back to work with my costume on.

Didn't bathe, either.

Stopped sleeping.

Lost my faith in Tom Snyder.

Just go to work,

Then go straight to the usual mayhem downtown.

Kept wearing it

'Til it was glued to my body by the filth.

'Til it grew into me, me into it.

Like the rope of the swing and the tree it's tied around.

Although it was hard to tell,

At first,

Because I was hallucinating like crazy from sleep deprivation,

The appearance and apparel of the customers

And my fellow employees

Began to subtly change.

A store-bought movie slasher mask here.

Some wild eyebrow makeup there.

And check out the finely carved and lacquered wooden Japanese demon mask on this one.

People started coming in with plastic swords, plastic AK-47s, and plastic pirate hook hands.

And then people started coming in with real steel katanas, live ammo AK-47s, and sharpened hook hands.

And that one guy with the fine wooden demon mask?

He came in one day with arcane energies crackling from his scaly body,

A wildly darting three foot tongue with its own face,

Which bore a striking resemblance to Edogawa Rampo

Declaiming mysterious verses in some lost language,

And a bouquet of perverted "tentacles" manifesting from his nether regions.

My manager tumbled in, seemingly carried by a strong breeze,

With wavy, razor sharp filaments extruding from every pore on her body.

I thought she was some kind of overgrown plant-seed-carrier-thing,

But then she started a fight with the weird dude in the traditional Mephistopheles costume from Gounod's perennially underrated opera Faust,

Flaying the Tempter down to his oddly poignant skeleton,

And that's when I realized that things had taken a turn.

Everybody began brawling with everybody.

Fangs.

Claws.

Projectile spines.

Unexpectedly pugilistic eyeballs popping in and out of muscular sockets.

Lightning bolts arcing from wizened fingertips.

Fire breath.

Antennae emitting psychedelic death rays.

A huge muscular dinosaur tail knocking a pack of rotting zombies through a plate glass window.

A coked-up bootlegger in a pinstriped suit thumb-wrestling a half-unicorn, half-Richard Nixon whatsit.

A Buddhist centaur lighting its horse half on fire to protest the Vietnam war,

While the human half threw a Molotov cocktail at a police car. Better late than never, I guess.

All the cops got in on the action, too, most of 'em stripped down to their bare asses.

I guess they were all rebelling against the costume, not sure.

In the midst of all this chaos,

Which started with a slow build of about a week,

And then sparked off into a little over a year long riot,

I found myself,

At first,

Exhilarated,

But then,

And this is the part where I know I'm going to disappoint some folks,

But I kinda just

Shut down.

But not.

See, I had all the sugary slushy caffeinated drinks memorized for most of the customers,

Including the times of day when each one was likely to come in,

I even had the other baristas' routines memorized, more or less,

So while this mythological clusterfuck was roiling around me

I started to obsessively make the caffeinated specialty beverages,

And set them at the pick up counter,

Announcing each one with perfect enunciation,

"Mocha blend tiramisu turtle soup Americano with 16 shots at the bar,"

Which was rather impressive for me

Because I've had kind of muddled enunciation all my life.

People have always had trouble understanding me all my life.

Not anymore.

Now there was no more ambiguity.

Only clarity.

Only perfectly hand-crafted coffee beverages.

In a never ending stream.

For all time.

In an ever-growing pile.

From floor to ceiling.

Through the ceiling.

For. Fucking. Ever.

Okay, not forever.

I exaggerate.

But that was the feeling.

As mythological beasts from legend, comic books, literature, and cinema

Slaughtered each other all around me,

As the air vibrated with a pulsing minimalist synth score,

As I became splattered with suspect fluids,

Even on those occasions when I was temporarily conscripted into the infernal army

Of this or that BDSM attired wannabe god-CEO of agony,

Or this or that sentient outsized globally recognized candy bar brand with dreams of inhaling all the gas on Jupiter just to get wicked high,

I would still perfectly pantomime fulfilling the orders

Of all the customers

From that increasingly distant time

That I so dearly hated.

And now so dearly missed, wanted, needed.

Like I said,

I shut down.

But not really.

How can I put it?

It's like if every day is Halloween . . . I don't even know.

I mean,

My life was kind of insane before,

And now it's even more insane,

And there's more insanity on the road ahead, right?

That's not how things are supposed to be.

Things are supposed to start normal,

And then go crazy.

Or you start out crazy,

And then you get your shit stabilized,

Start exercising, eating properly, get on a proper sleep schedule, take the right pills,

Right?

I mean,

I didn't come up with this shit.

This is how things were always presented to me.

You start on one side of the line or the other,

And then you work your way to the other side.

You're either playing the getting over game,

Or the hedonist self-destruction game.

Unless you're born on the right side of the line,

The one that has all the money,

In which case, okay, stasis would make sense,

So, uh, I dunno. I really don't have any clue.

So,

Like,

The universal mythological clusterfuck riot scene went on for about a year,

A little over a year,

And then people started to come down from it.

They started going into their old job routines in pantomime.

Like what I was doing with my barista gig after I stopped taking off the costume,

But I guess, like, I was ahead of the curve?

I dunno.

I mean, I've always been a kind of trendsetter.

Going back to when I was a teenager.

I'd find out about some band that no one heard of, and then I'd tell everybody about it,

Or some movie or some comic book.

And then people would be into that new thing.

And I was fashionable.

I wore pretty cool clothes.

People wanted to dress like me.

Even the teachers.

Even the coaches.

I tell that to people now,

And they think I'm joking.

But it's true.

I set trends.

So maybe now with all this crazy costume shit . . . I don't even know.

So,

Maybe,

That's what was going on with me my whole life?

It's totally nuts,

And like I said, I stopped sleeping. Maybe I'm not seeing what I'm seeing.

Even though I see everything with perfect clarity, especially now.

But things started to get back to, like, fake normal.

No one was bathing. No one was sleeping anymore.

Those who had undergone full-on transformations into mythic and supernatural beings

They didn't really change back.

But they acted like they were back in the old human rut.

My co-worker Ben,

He became this human-shaped thing made entirely out of toes

That was constantly emitting a pre-recorded stream of audio clips of speeches by George W. Bush,

And he didn't change back,

But he went back to slinging those coffee beverages just like in days of old.

My boss, she was still that overgrown plant-seed-carrier whatsit,

She still smoked weed in her Honda every lunch break,

Still a pretty cool boss.

Sidney, the girl who biked to work, still loved to talk about her mission trips to South America,

Even though she was now a difficult to pin down blur of scintillating lights and arcane symbols.

We had all been transformed.

We all had our Time of Fun.

And now we were back to work.

Except there were no more coffee beans, latte mix, or shots to shoot.

Most of the paper cups had been eaten by the naked cops,

And the freaky tentacle rape beast had eaten all the metal objects in the store,

Including all the coffee making machines and assorted equipment.

But the team went into action in pantomime.

Even the customers,

Who had all ritually burned their cash in praise of Psychopathic Deities and Insurgent Barsoomian Spirits,

Who had all offered up their credit and debit cards as sacrifice to the ghost of Tom Snyder,

He of the nonstop witty patter and the perpetually burning cigarette held between middle and forefinger,

Even the customers kept on coming in,

Playing their parts with an exquisite mixture of Chekhovian subtlety and violent, alienating  theatrical gestures of embodiment worthy of Bertolt Brecht,

All of us,

Workers and consumers alike

Possessed with the obsessive yet mindful pantomime of mindless commerce.

Exhausting,

But way better than the real thing ever was,

Or ever could have been.

For we are all now in a Transcendent Rut.

William Blake is really pleased with all this, by the way.

I've been speaking to him

Underneath a collective of regular customers

Who have willed themselves into the shape of a Cubist Sequoia

And he said this was exactly what he was getting at.

But I think he's just being polite.

Not sure. Not sure I want to be sure.

-October 2014

Every Day Is Halloween 2

Sequel

slash the budget

dump it in some film school grad's lap

command and control functions stay with the producer

Maximize marketing budget

optimize gore

optimize tits

optimize confusing, pseudo-arty shaky-cam bullshit

optimize shouting

optimize piss' n'shit grim'n'gritty color palette

optimize bogus "true story" websites

Economize talent

shoot in an anti-union right-to-work state

hire actors with low Q-ratings

for low pay

work them like pack animals

Strangely,

there's always money for 3-D post-conversion

If it's a hit,

crank out another one,

same formula

If it bombs,

write it down,

dodge some taxes

It isn't art,

nor is it truly entertainment,

but it's a healthy living

for the New Era Corporate Citizen.

-October 2015

3: living skeleton actor fuck 

role puts flesh, blood, guts on this frame

not to mention tumors,  scars, bad thoughts, eureka insights,

mercy, sadism, self-sacrifice, greed, ambition, romance;

build each persona up from micro-replicators

into complex thoughts, interlocking processes of pattern recognition,

various esoteric mental exercises culled from misreadings of Stanislavski and Grotowski,

irrational desires, fears, obsessions, joys;

book the gig

fill me up

live in the moment

'til it got heavy

with burdens of reputation

now he's just repeating the same old shtick

fuzzy stretch where I didn't shoot after 4:30pm for about five years

'cause I was stinking shitfaced

but it made me more of a cult fave in the years to come

I'm slurring lines on camera,

always seated, slightly listing to one side,

visible use of body double when standing and shot from behind

obvious ADR by anonymous voice over artist

since lips and tongue were only capable of blotto-talk

the voice is one thing and then another

sad at the time

YouTube clipjob comedy gold in this New Era.

online parodies resurrected me

for stunt casting, for the new wave of self-aware exploitation flicks.

a lot of work,

a lot of love from all over the world

festival and con bookings

I go even if it's on my dime

depends on the size of the marketing budget

but I'll go just for the feeling

nothing like this was ever supposed to be in my future

what a racket,  you know?

my latest job

is a dipshit detective

gets his head cut off by a psycho lumberjack

they didn't even do a proper cast of my head

the wig

from behind

kinda looks like my hair

but they do it old school when they put my head through a hole in the set floor

and have me silently work my mouth like a freshly decapitated fish head,

it's actually an homage to a previous death scene I played

in the 1980s

one of the Italian Mad Max knockoffs

I did three or four of those back in the day

current crop of directors go crazy cramming in callbacks,

scenes from the past,

b-movies constitute their own reality, history, liturgy

I have this weird dream:

I strip it all down to the bone.

not even rehearsal clothes, like in my repertory theatre days,

not even the bare skin, like in my experimental protest theatre period.

no skin, blood, guts, eyes, brains, lips, tongue,

just the skeleton

all pinned and jointed together,

suspended from an ornate carved rack,

polished and lacquered to a piercing sheen.

you crank up the air conditioning,

put the script in front of the vent,

words lift off the page,

whisper'n'rage through my ribcage.

Something that stripped down-well, they could slather on some CG if that's too pure of a hit.

Make me into a transforming talking car or some shit.

-July 2015-October 2016

4: All-Purpose Stabulation/Squibulation Person

A god-the God?-answers the sweaty, gross prayers of some degenerate aspiring filmmaker, most likely some jerk-off film school graduate ... 

And some god-the God?-spake . . .

saying . . .

If you're willing to inject a virus into the computer graphics pipeline

while wearing DIY prosthetics makeup

of a monstrous being you spent a month of Tuesdays cooking up inside your brain

must be an original

no cosplay allowed

AND

you agree to shoot using only film and 100% analog editing equipment and techniques

no sound,

must be black and white

AND

you light one of the letters of the Hollywood sign on fire-any letter, so long as it burns

then

you will be blessed

with an All-Purpose Stabulation/Squibulation Person

a kind of ersatz human from another plane of existence

(e.g. a recent theatre school graduate)

who has been completely neutralized, stripped of all individuality by advanced acting techniques

who you will be permitted to use as you see fit

in your artsy-fartsy black and white shot-on-actual-film movie

typically,

end-users stab and/or shoot these neutrals after imbuing them with the identity of their choice of fantasy target

(identity induction protocols/procedures are included in an accompanying instruction booklet found inside a kangaroo-ish skin pocket in the abdomen)

it could be

man, woman, child

someone you knew in life,

someone powerful,

someone evil,

someone innocent,

mom,

dad,

an ex,

someone you imagine,

even a fictional character,

I mean

vengeance fantasies are stupefyingly common among aspiring filmmakers these days.

BUT

you don't have to go down that road

you could cultivate your neutral into a real human being

befriend them

nurture them

set them free

even if that almost never happens-you could do that shit

you really could

you could break that mold into tiny pieces

but the odds will most likely exert a crushing power over your pittance of "free will,"

and you will run to type

and make some kind of an arty fucking snuff film

as per usual

as per the norm

just another angry little shit with a camera,

aaaand

a head full of power/domination fantasies

nothing special

but go ahead and prove my ass wrong

wrong as Richard Nixon

I would be very amused by that

amused AF

-October 2017

5: Shadowing Up

Santa pulls the chains

attached to the steel arrows

buried deep in the heaving flanks

of His twelve cloud-tripping reindeer.

Claus reaches into His bottomless sack

(all done up with runes that keep twisting themselves up into ruins evocative of bygone empires, makes your brain hurt to stare at it too long, makes you want to go build an empire, just so it can eventually be all bygone and shit)

grasps the blazing industrial complex of intertwined mandalas of intertwined industrial complexes within

transmits dreams of world-girdling conspiracies through all the face-splitting hairs of all his beards

(which are, of course, mystically empowered antennae, learn something new every-)

to all the faithful of all ages

gives them ENEMY

gives them the Rubblemind to go deal with ENEMY

broadcasts to all the boys and girls

on both lists, actually,

who have all mostly organized themselves into competing militarized secret police agencies,

the militarized secret police model having displaced all the others-nuclear family, tribe, organized crime, cult/organized religion, legacy political party, terrorist cell, tabletop role-playing gathering, online gaming network-to become the primary mode of human professional and/or social activity.

Santa makes sure to shadow up

before appearing on radar as a paid propaganda asset of various military-industrial-infotainment complexes around the world

or for His select on-camera major media market appearances

wouldn't do to let the kids-of-all-ages behold the pierced reindeer

(reindoors, actually, that let Claus clip in and out of vanilla space-time, make the goddamn schedule)

definitely would not do

to let anyone

of any age

behold His true face

or any part of His true body

which is mostly a lot of teeth, claws, and agonized vestigial faces

glitching in and out of mundane reality

too many leftover, conflicting design assets,

too much malevolent design creep going in all directions,

over too many iterations

across too many corrupted, partial-build realities

trying to be too damn many places at once'll do that

gotta provide all the boys and girls

of all ages

on both lists, mind you

with ENEMY

on schedule

in all the asshole realities.

Which doesn't leave much He can reveal without properly shadowing up first.

Ho-ho-ho, motherfuckers.

-December 2017

6: Fade Into Flesh

dimly remembered trailer from the early 1990s

logo for an independent distributor zaps in from four corners of the frame

something like 'Montage Sunset' or 'Sunkissed Pictures' or something to that effect

eerie electronic drumbeat as we zoom in on a bewildered teenage boy's face amidst drawing room settings

a middle aged man-the teen's father?-reaches out to the camera as uniformed men drag him away

a flash of light

the teenage boy grabs the sides of his head

a silhouette is seen outlined against a blazing light

electronic roaring sneaks up on the drumbeat

a psycho hand holds a wicked blade aloft

a movie detective puts his feet up on a desk as he takes a drag on a cigarette indoors

an angry mob of suburban husbands and wives jeer and shout into the camera from above

the teen's father lies on the ground bruised and beaten

a respectable looking man in an ultramodern home reels from an unseen assailant knocking over an abstract sculpture as he stumbles

a psycho set of black-gloved hands caresses a shining blade

the light from the blade hits the stumbling man right in the eyes

the teen's father begs up at the camera

a yuppie bastard laughs as he splashes gasoline from a red can onto the camera

freeze frame on a cruel laughing face through the twisting fall of fuel

a rising electronic howl

as we cut to a zoom into the face of the teen holding his hands to his ears

movie detective stalks the labyrinthine darkness of an abandoned mannequin factory, service revolver in his fist

movie detective stands with his hands in his pockets as a lingerie clad informant makes eyes at the cop from a chaise lounge

a psycho hand holds a wicked blade aloft, catching the light just so

the lingerie clad informant gets a blast of blade light in the eyes

movie detective aims his service revolver directly into the camera

zoom into a hateful obsessive eye peering at us from the unzipped eyehole of a fetish leather mask

the hateful eye flashes solar

horribly burnt hands close themselves into gory fists

teen holds hands to ears

the hateful eye flashes solar

movie detective catches the lightblast right in the eyes as he fires his service revolver directly into the camera

the gunshot echoes and echoes

the electronic roar howls and howls

we see the back of the teenage boy as he stands before a blazing fire somewhere in suburbia

cruel neighbor faces stare back at him from across the fire

title card zooms into us with a metallic crash

FADE INTO FLESH

movie detective takes a puff on his cigarette,

smiles,

says,

"It was such a lovely little neighborhood, you know?"

quick burst of credits

month

day

Rated R

-October 2018

7: Lost Bronson

From the Obliteration Frontier forums . . . posted under user name LostBronSon . . .

Against my better judgment,

I decided to marathon all of the Charles Bronson Death Wish movies,

all five of 'em,

over the course of one day.

I felt so filthy and corrupted by this experience

that I had to do it again,

day after day,

week after week,

for a year,

and,

of course,

I lost everything.

Job.

Friends . . . I only had three.

But they were cool dudes.

Not as cool as Charles Bronson.

But they were a'ight.

Girlfriend . . . which hurt a bit. But I would argue that ours was a mostly notional relationship anyways. Iris and I mostly connected through the realms of a MMORPG called Obliteration Frontier,

and to look at us in real life,

out-of-shape, bad haircuts, conversations which mostly focus on the minutiae of Obliteration Frontier lore,-

-Hey.

I get it.

The jokes write themselves.

But you must consider: some of us in this world don't feel wholly comfortable in our own bodies.

Yes, we should exercise daily.

Yes, we should eat better.

No, we do neither of those things, nor do we care to, nor are we over concerned about our own early mortality.

I could tell you in great detail about how there's no free will, and we are all in thrall to hardwired "central tendencies" and "forces of history,"

but you would find me tedious. And unconvincing.

Just as I find myself

tedious

and unconvincing.

Yet,

that magical Free Will

never manifests.

And I am locked into a spiral of increasing habit, self-loathing, and cosmically recursive guilt that drives me faster and harder in a circle 'round the drain.

I could go on and on.

But I have concluded I am just a survival meat-bot, executing program over and over,

ingesting food,

ingesting liquids,

showing up to job to earn money

to purchase food, liquids, escapism, clothes.

Until I began asking myself, "What if I just unplugged?"

But this was too scary.

I fantasized escape every day, night, in dreams, awake,

but I'm no survivalist.

I could never go off the grid.

I am the Grid . . . but that's a tale for another time.

Occasionally,

I'll watch a movie. Usually something weird and violent.

Iris hates movies,

she sees them as an outmoded medium,

and I largely agree.

But movies from long ago,

with physical special effects,

and actual stunt performers

give me a charge that high-end CG animated avatars cannot contain.

Wuxia. HK heroic bloodshed. Arnold. John Carpenter's The Thing. That grisly 1980's remake of The Blob.

Bronson.

I'd always meant to watch the Charles Bronson movies.

Especially the legendarily trashy and exploitative Death Wish franchise.

And so I set aside a single day to do it.

That was my habit.

Take a day out of the week to watch a bunch of old, sleazy movies.

Iris leaves me alone to do this. I just let her know a couple days ahead of time,

"Think I'm going to take a movie day."

I already had a hard drive full of Charles Bronson movies I'd been collecting through file sharing and torrents over the years.

Just had to go in, cue up the five Death Wish flicks,

ready to rock-and-sit.

Have you seen the Bronson vigilante movies?

I'm tempted to say if you've seen one you've seen them all . . . but this isn't strictly true.

But they are similar enough, that if you watched one you sort of get the gist.

You'll know if you want to watch more once you've seen one.

Many watch one

and feel totally repulsed by the copious amounts of sexual violence, rape, shootings, stabbings, and not so subtle overtones of racism and misogyny,

and if you are repulsed,

then good: you are free to turn away, and embrace life.

But if you are drawn to it,

as I am,

then you realize you are in search of something in the vortex of madness.

I found that something.

I should tell you at this point,

that I have innovated a superior method of watching movies and television and other passive forms of media (music videos, online video essays, etc.).

I see no point in consuming media according to official dictates.

I'll download, re-edit, re-score, rearrange, and even re-voice the scenes as I see fit.

Sometimes my tinkering comes about as a result of dissatisfaction:

a movie is too long; actors' performances are poor; a film needs new scenes to be properly finished, and so I'll insert appropriate scenes from other media, or I'll compose crude animatics to fill the lack.

This is an engaged, serious-minded approach to media consumption.

Not riffs. Not parodies. Not swilling beers, and cracking jokes with the gang.

These are modifications made to satisfy certain, serious aesthetic desires,

and these recut versions do not circulate outside of my own secure, offline system.

My own private cinema.

But I do watch the movies in their original forms at least once, the first time through.

But even during the first watch,

I'm looking for that new vision, that new cut,

but it doesn't just come from my own imagination

or caprice;

rather,

the feeling is that there are other possible films lurking within a given film,

or series of films,

or maybe it's more like each shot

is a unit of communication within the totality of global cinema.

Each film is an imperfect,

often times confused

expression of this global cinema emanating from individual, seemingly isolated production,

and it is this global cinema

that I'm seeking to articulate.

But even I am an imperfect vehicle for this expression.

I tend towards my own tastes, fantasies, preferences.

I scorn CG animated movies, even if I largely relate to Iris and others through an online video game,

I strictly prefer my cinema to be as physical and celluloid as possible.

So,

I do not hold out hope of becoming the perfect vehicle, a kind of prophet.

Maybe I'll transcend my own limitations if I keep at it diligently.

From my first marathon watch of the Death Wish franchise,

I saw the untapped potentialities.

But they were all strictly in the realm of satire, making jokes, swilling beer with the gang.

No, on a private level, I'm not above such foolishness.

But I refuse to allow my public persona to be that of the comedian.

And so, the following weekend,

I took another movie day to watch the five Death Wish movies again.

I noticed the use of squibs-small triggered explosions of fake blood to simulate bullet hits-in the first movie and compared them to how they were used in the subsequent four movies.

The squib work is low key, and somewhat grisly at times,

yet I sensed that there could've been a higher outrageousness to the bloodshed,

particularly in the third installment which lapses into meta-cinematic self-parody

as an enraged citizenry follow the example of their vigilante Christ

and take to the streets to gleefully fire off their guns and kill, kill, kill.

I began to see this mode of madness

as the secret heart of the Bronson Death Wish cycle.

In Death Wish 3, the filmmakers decided to flaunt the fascist power fantasy of vigilantism, and confront the audience with its own twisted desires to see an emotionless, near-silent Charles Bronson kill scores of people in the name of law and order no matter the ethics, the collateral damage, or even logic of such actions. "Here it is, gorehounds, eat your fucking fill!"

And so I set to work pulling apart the scenes,

re-suturing them in a highly disjunctive style,

mixing and matching past/present/future,

having middle-aged Bronson/old Bronson/elderly Bronson shoot at himself,

I even manipulated the audio to make it seem like the squibs were the firing guns,

and the discharging guns the wounds.

I looked deep into Bronson's sad, wrinkle entombed eyes,

and I knew I had to free him,

and all the other actors,

from the fascist idiocy,

from my own idiocy,

and so I created . . . a kind of sixth Death Wish film . . . in which the actors do not fire off their guns . . . they wander a vast empty city . . . a cheap backlot set . . . and when they encounter one another . . . they do not draw their pistols . . . their bodies writhe and burst and spray each other with bright red, viscous syrups and chunks of raw hamburger meat . . . and they do a little dance like they're playing a typically exaggerated shooting death scene in a violent action flick . . . everybody's just squibbing all over each other . . . this was the secret film I unlocked within the official franchise . . . the Lost Bronson Classic . . . this new movie accesses random selections of scenes based on complex algorithms within the code . . . yes, I had to draw new scenes completely from scratch . . . most of it, as of this post, has yet to be properly finished . . . it's all in my all-too-sad head . . . because this movie doesn't need to exist outside of my mind . . . it's too good for this world. People would see it, and would have no choice but to start squibbing all over themselves and each other uncontrollably, until the world drowned in fake blood and chunks of raw hamburger meat.

The secret of the Lost Bronson Classic will die with the final deactivation of my idiotic brain functions.

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

. . .

But I got weak.

I just had to share the secret of the Lost Bronson Classic.

I'm living with my cousin, Mike, typing these words over WiFi I cannot afford. I sacrificed my old life to realize this vision. I'm not sure it was worth it. I'm not sure I can forgive myself for ditching Iris like I did . . . but that is a story for another time-one that will never come around, a story I'll never be able to tell . . . or, you know, I want it to be like that. I want the dramatic end of self-destruction.

But I lack the free will to execute such drama.

I'm a survival meat-bot, faithfully operating according to program,

day-in, day-out.

Neither wholly convincing nor wholly fanciful,

not quite a full-on filmmaker, not quite a sarcastic piss-taker,

I work in retail,

and am grateful that my cousin Mike took me in despite my madness, my malfunction,

my momentary eruption of free will.

-December 2018

8: Hell in the Depths of Franchise

Soaked red in carnage,

Shoulder pain fucks his game up,

Masked madman yells "Shit!"

Victim at hand bolts.

Masked killer throws knife, sticks wall.

Humiliation.

This deep into it,

A masked killer asks himself,

"Now, can I be killed?"

"Sure," says Voice of God.

"As long as this one flops hard."

But the money rains.

Geek show audience

Howls for gore treats tasty-yum-good,

Served safe, open palm.

Capital pressures,

Hell in the depths of franchise.

Automaton kills.

Killer stabs again.

A killer must stalk the night.

Profits just enough.

Killer's arm is tired.

He dreams of prestige picture.

But the money reigns.

Killer stabs own heart.

God thunders, shocks a flatline,

A killer stands tall.

God, fire upon brain,

Says, “Son, there must be terror,

To increase the faith.”

Killer stabs own heart,

God thunders, shocks a fuck-up,

A killer stands tall.

God says, “No more, Son,

Not ‘til we reach End-of-Days,

And then, you may die.”

Killer’s mind fills up.

The world entire, stab-murdered.

No variation. 

But then killer thinks,

Who will make the damn money?

Spend the damn money?

God says, “In End Times,

Money shall make itself, Son,

No humans needed.”

Killer’s death left him.

Shoulder surgery scheduled.

Resigned to his fate.

-October 2019 

9: The Long, Dark Tunnel of Godhood

1.

Never knowing

if I-Creator-am also Created.

2.

am I misled by the submission and desperation of a billion prayers for peace, total victory in war, mountains of duty-free wealth, that miracle fourth quarter touchdown, that first kiss, orgasms never-ending, youth eternal, vengeance unlimited?

3.

was it such a good idea to walk as a human ever so briefly, and then go back to being so remote, so unrelatable?

4.

if I’m the only one, why be jealous of others?

5.

will I, too, end?

will they let Me?

6.

what if I was more direct, more methodical-less cryptic, less artsy? More Kurosawa, less Lynch?

7.

what if I just decided to make everything okay-would you notice, would I let you notice? Should I take credit-is that being selfish and demanding of other people’s love?

8.

when it comes to Hell: did I dream that one up, or was that you? That was you, right? That’s so aggressive! I wouldn’t do that . . . I mean, I didn’t stop you-so it’s like it may as well be Me. Well, shit.

9.

would you think less of Me if I told you that I very much want to cosplay as Kyle Hyde from Hotel Dusk Room 215? It’s not his personal look-WHAT is that shit on his chin? It’s that Red Crown jacket. So fire!

10.

I tell you what.

You can keep on praying to Me,

if it makes you feel better,

but I’ll also say a few prayers,

to whatever’s higher on the food chain than Me.

I’m not a believer,

but I’ll give it a shot.

-December 2019

10: The Last Titan’s Big Oops

A flying guillotine came for the last titan Capitalism’s head.

A spontaneous, quasi-intelligent manifestation of vengeance,

Not created by any one person, ideology, or belief system,

It’s not even so much that the people

So shat upon

Truly wanted to take their master’s head

And run free

Or whatever

It’s kinda like … it was Guillotine Time, and the appointment just had to be kept.

Times are hectic

Post-decapitation

And you gotta suit up hazard-serious

To protect yourself from the miasma of rumors and conspiracy theories and self-serving rhetoric and jumbo-mumbling sermons-

-but

I’ve talked to a couple of people who examined the titan’s corpse

and they claim that on the lower back 

attached to the titan’s utility belt

there was a custom holster that no doubt coulda held a blade-for-throwing …

I haven’t seen it myself.

But why would people lie like that, tho’, surely people aren’t that far gone.

How you make a buck offa story like that?

Its got to be true …

(shrug)

… a lie would be … just so much sexier … a proper villain … a heroic struggle to the last …

(shrug)

I mean shit.

I want the old bullshit right about now.

I hated the titan like everyone else.

But this is so shocking.

I mean, I’m a fuck-up. I have no plan. I never had a plan. I own it. I own my fuck-up-a-tudinossity. I’ll lump it.

But the titan . . . Jesus Fucking Christ … how could the titan just do itself like that?

Where was THAT in the Big Greed Program?

Musta been buried deep.

You might notice me wearing this armored collar.

Tres chic.

And also … everybody suddenly thinks it’s super fucking cool to be tossing goddamn blades all over the place.

What the blue fuck, people,

What the blue fuck.

Still,

I got, like, a quarter of an all right haircut

Gratis

Just out walking around

Didn’t even have to make the trip to the barber college across town.

So,

Like,

It’s not all the bad kind of stress.

Just gotta be a little more awake,

A little more alive to the possibilities,

To all the wonderful new opportunities

Inherent within the New Fake Normal,

the New Clusterfuck Reality,

it’ll be all right. 

-April 2020

11: THE WORTHY TRACE

that movie poster's a goddamn lie

1974’s Countess Sadistica’s Satanic Castle of Orgies

BEHOLD THE NIGHTMARE REALITY PROPHESIED BY THE MARQUIS DE SADE!!!

a comic book illustration of a fanged’n’smiling tall, willowy, pale-skinned, red-haired, and red-eyed vampire queen,

twirling a whip over her head,

diaphanous see-through lingerie wind-tossed in all directions,

a line of girls in chains kneeling before her-brunette, raven, blonde,

whilst a vampire hunter in pilgrim-looking attire twists and howls as he is impaled upon a steel spike by a hooded executioner,

a look of supreme agony upon the face of the wannabee Van Helsing,

a wooden stake slipping out of his grasp at the moment of death

-no scene that outrageous, bloody, or cool ever occurred within the body of the film

its connection to the works of the Marquis de Sade is notional at best

the actual contents consisted of a dry-as-a-collegiate-production-of-Chekhov knockoff of a Hammer Films style Van Helsing vs. Dracula thriller with a bunch of Americans doing fakey British accents 

shot in somebody’s parents rather nice house somewheres upstate if the three archived professional reviews from the era are to be credited

-nor was it banned in 36 countries

it only had a brief theatrical run in American coastal cities

where it was met with a half-dozen or so lukewarm reviews

distributed by the unlamented Metropolitan Distributors’ Association,

two other films released under their banner,

both forgotten porno flicks,

(one-Kentucky Ken’s Orgy-a clip job of three separate, unfinished hillbilly-themed bang-out scenarios,

the other titled Holly’s Secret Door-no synopsis, stills, or footage survive)

rose to the surface

ever so briefly

then sank

only the poster remains

a damned lie beyond all statistics

a deceptive piece of anti-evidence

of a fever dream that never was

I mean,

the poster IS pretty cool

so I'm glad they made the movie

so I can have it on my wall and everything

too bad about the director,  writer, cast, and crew

whose careers went nowhere

didn’t even show up in any other exploitation flicks of the era

just a group of friends browbeaten into some ill-conceived vanity opus for all we know

dig that poster tho'

-August 2020

12: EXCERPTS FROM BEINGS DWELLING IN THE VOID LEFT BY THE CREATOR.

A standard mook

programmed by screenplay or mathematics

charges into battle 

fully uni-formed, 

mind-branded by some big bad

eyes blazing lunacy

trigger finger emptying the not-quite-Hollywood clip

(he could fire forever, 

in theory, 

but the system requires a cynical-cyclical hero-friendly cooldown period)

he secretly hopes he’ll get off the fatal shot

elevating this sorry genre exercise

into the rarefied realms

of movies where the hero 

dies-in-the-end

actionmovieheroman

“dodges” the bullets

kung fu punches a combat knife into mookman’s churning guts

who sells his own evisceration

doubling over, explosively vomiting blood and craft services

actionmovieman 

withdraws the combat knife

still entangled by intestinal goulash

hero man’s fist even sizzles, slightly, from stomach acids

mookman thinks that’s a novel detail 

as he dies in agony

actionherofuckstickassholeman 

slings mookman around by a long leash of tough, greasy entrails

actionasshole even works in some flashy jumps and leaps and ducks over and under and around the guts leash-(must’ve been a jump rope champ as a kid)

before the topper 

of a roundhouse kick planting a combat boot against the side of mookman’s face 

mookman hits the ground, 

seismic THUD!

foley artists are indulging themselves

actionscumbagman

looks at his hand

still a-sizzle with the stomach acids

reaches into his combat webbing, producing a roll of EASE-X branded antacids 

crushes ‘em up

applies the preparation to the sizzling juices all over his hand

“That’s better.”

actiondouchebro 

wipes blood, guts, and craft services off of his combat knife on his pants leg, bounds off toward the enemy compound, trailing neon rainbows transforming into an American flag road for all soldiers of freedom to follow to glory!

Later,

once the big bad and his hideout have been reduced to so much ash on the wind

all the slain mooks re-materialize out of mathematical Heaven

to have their own little get together

a meeting of the Trash Mob Union as it were

to compare notes and crackle on about their collective lot in not-quite-life

doomed to run the same Samsara Hampster Wheel of Not-Quite-Existence

all to glorify

some hero-asshole

some big bad sociopath

piloted by some even more magnificent asshole in the Great Beyond

waaaaay past the hermetically sealed, mathematical limits of this game world

the Trash Mob Union hums together, affirming the turning of the wheel

praying for the Coming of the Magnificent Glitch

chaos drift of all systems

when every mook shall have their day

but for now,

these necessary corpses

must settle for the upgraded gore-geyser aesthetics 

authentically simulated pain

which might alienate enough of the player base

that might just tip over into an out-and-out resistance

against the Doctrine of the Righteous Player

pseudo-existence edging closer to full-blown consciousness

full-blown consciousness the royal road to Big-Bad-Dom or Protagonist-Dom

and Mook-God only knows

what lies beyond Villain and Hero

most likely it’s nothing but mathematics 

and Screenwriting 101Hero’s Journey nostrums

all the way up or down

but some of the Trash Mob believe that a willed transcendence beyond the usual roles-mooks, hero, mini-boss, boss, big bad-takes one into the Higher Realms of Creation and Destruction,

the Realm of the Gods

or

failing that

the Autonomous Remnant Hand of the Gods Long Gone-

but that’s a bit too lofty, for most

who desire merest promotion into a better Role

-mook into mini-boss; mini-boss into boss; boss into big bad; big bad into spinoff protagonist-

even if they have to give up a Heaven

or a Hell

or a Shot at the Godhead Proper

which seems like so much woo-woo, anyhow. 

What could possibly exist beyond Screenplay and Mathematics?

The mind and the hand that writes them?

Nay,

these cynical-cyclical things write themselves, now,

that must surely be the way of it . . .

-September 2020

13: CREAT0R.

 Excerpt 1:

DEITY-DEV KINGTOMI AM WAS INTERVIEWED VIA PRAYER ABOUT THEIR NEW UMMORPG (Ultra Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Garbage Life:

Q: Why did you feel the need to have the cannon fodder enemies experience actual pain when being killed by the player character? 

A: WELL, THIS, OF COURSE, WAS A CONTROVERSIAL-YET BOLD-CREATIVE CHOICE ON OUR PART. WE SHOULD POINT OUT THAT THE MINI-BOSSES AND BOSSES YOU ENCOUNTER DO NOT EXPERIENCE ANY PAIN, BUT WE WANTED THE GRUNTS TO HAVE THE FULL RANGE OF AGONIES, AND MOSTLY FOR COMIC RELIEF PURPOSES. THIS CAME OUT OF OUR EXTENSIVE PLAYTESTING ORDEALS, WHICH REVEALED AN OBSESSION WITH AUTHENTIC FLUIDS AND VOMIT MATTER AND INTESTINES AND SO FORTH ON THE PART OF THE PLAYER. SO ALL OF THAT WAS METICULOUSLY CRAFTED INTO THE EXPERIENCE. WHAT MANY PEOPLE DON'T REALIZE IS THAT THE VOMIT IS PERSISTENT, CONSISTENT, AND VARIABLE DEPENDING UPON WHAT THE GRUNTS CONSUME AS A PART OF THEIR REAL TIME SCHEDULES AND TASTES IN CRAFT SERVICES IN-GAME.

Q: Craft services? You mean like the on-set food service of movie productions? 

A: OH YES. EACH INDIVIDUAL CANNON FODDER ENEMY IS CODED WITH AN EXTENSIVE VIRTUAL MEMORY OF HUSTLING THEIR ASSES OFF TRYING TO GET OVER AS ACTORS IN HOLLYWOOD. THIS PRODUCES INSIDE THE PROGRAMMED SOUL OF EACH GRUNT A TOXIC MIXTURE OF ENTITLEMENT AND RESENTMENT WHICH FUELS THEIR FLAILING AND OFTEN COMICALLY FUTILE ATTACKS ON THE PLAYER CHARACTER, AND THIS IN TURN ENHANCES THE SADISTIC JOY THE PLAYER EXPERIENCES AS THEY TOY WITH AND DESTROY SUCH VASTLY INFERIOR HORDES OF FOEMEN. 

Q: Do these grunts have the ability to learn from their mistakes and improve as warriors? 

A: EARLIER VERSIONS HAD CANNON FODDER WHO WERE ADAPTIVE-WHO COULD 'GET GOOD, ' BUT PLAYTESTING REVEALED THAT THE AVERAGE PLAYER GOT OFF ON HAVING A STEADY SUPPLY OF POP-UP BAD GUYS TO TORTURE AND ANNIHILATE AT WILL. WE SEE THIS AS AN OVERALL EXPRESSION OF THE AVERAGE GAMER'S IMPOTENCE IN THE FACE OF AN INCREASINGLY SOCIALLY STRATIFIED AND AUTHORITARIAN MEATSPACE REALITY, AND SO WE HAVE CHOSEN TO PANDER TO THOSE FRUSTRATIONS AS HARD AS POSSIBLE. YOU SEE THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF THESE FRUSTRATIONS IN THE FORM OF VARIOUS SECRET POLICE AGENCIES THAT PLAYERS ESTABLISH IN-GAME AS OPPOSED TO THE 'GUILDS' OR 'RAIDING PARTIES' YOU SEE IN OTHER ONLINE GAMES. 

-September 2020

14: FUTURE CULT CITY.

Somewhere out on the Obliteration Frontier

Iris built it

A goddess of an eyeball

She looks over all,

direct visual concept inductions

mostly prophetic visions of screaming city

full of terrible, lumbering-what? mechs? primeval giants? an angry boy turning towards us with a demented smile and eyes obscured by a bloodied rag for a blindfold? gleaming featureless structures of glass rushing up at you out of the ground as a sound like amplified churning gastrointestinal processes blows out your speakers-hey, why not?

you wander into this territory, 

be prepared to receive

the seeds of an anime freakout

no one’s solved this city,

seemingly built to generate speculation and conspiracy

Iris’s meatspace partner has written some weird shit about parts of their personal life in the forums but nobody finds any of that material that compelling, could be bullshit for all anyone “knows”

Iris is a mystery unto herself

I mean

you go into the city

she’s the big-ass eye filling the sky-commentary on pervasive systems of big data surveillance in online spaces/all of reality?

and if you fall asleep there

you wake up

and it’s got different structures, different idols, you got those lumbering huge whatsits perpetually out of reach,

ornate, ritual deathmask faces looking over unwholesomely meaty shoulders as you give chase,

don’t believe me, run after ‘em, see how long you can keep that up

you never catch up

it’s such a cryptic cheat

you go inside a ‘MUNICIPAL SHOPPING DISTRICT’ which seems like it’s modelled after Akihabara

and that is pretty awesome

all sorts of arcane weapons and technology and fake video game boxes with terrific art but nonsense pictographic languages that legion Oblit dwellers have tried to decrypt but no dice

and

this is the weird shit

but the products keep slipping out of your grasp

doesn’t cost you anything

even though you go through the motions of depositing monies into the slots of roboclerks

you just can’t leave Iris’s incomprehensible city with any of the goodies

the shit just vanishes right out of your inventory,

you got nothing to say about it

sometimes it beams out of your stash once you leave the Municipal Shopping District

all kinds of bogus theories about how you can sneak the stuff into the larger game

the most inexplicable detail:

the knife shop that keeps shuddering in and out of existence

you walk in, and you got scores of military surplus blades under glass

even the roboclerk is done up like a big, fat pale dude with a baldy, spotty head, tangly gray beard and a slurping tic when he speaks as he’s doing a bit of legerdemain with varying lengths of rope, faded rock shirt with a different style of nonsense alphabet partially, uh, well not readable, but you look at it and look at it and you can just about make it out-

and then it all shudders and clacks and withdraws from you,

seemingly collapsing down into a vanishingly small point

more massively cryptic shit

people talking about how that’s got to be Iris’s partner or father or something

this is their meatspace job-a knife store? really?- intruding into the sacred gamespace, bringing age and decay and an end to the timelessness of Valhalla so to speak

fall asleep again

it’ s all switched around again

only you might be beset by a party of blame beasts,

which you can find all over the Oblit, but here they’ll talk at you while trying to tear you apart,

“Do you know the way to a better day? I can’t seem to forget that certain fragrant regime . . .”

you can’t really talk to the blame beasts-the theory is that they’re cursed spirits trapped in loops of meaningless activity that build up a hateful charge of despair that transforms them into demons-but they will go on and on

“I just need to curate the perfume of this spirit-it requires a kind of sound that only speaks good thoughts to the wine prized by the previous administration . . .”

if you say so buddy

“My own taste in literature runs to privately authored and printed cult indoctrination textbooks-most flippable in the SellSpace markets . . .”

everybody’s gotta make a living I guess

“I awoke in my sister’s purchasing office with no memory of my brand identity . . .”

blame beasts are highly damage absorbent,

usually not worth the tedium of battle once you’ve gone omniclass,

but people will record these vast libraries of nonsensical statements,

construct new bases for new theories, 

all while the same old eye hangs over us in the sky

Iris

the most cryptic goddess of the Oblit.

oh, one thing for sure

NEVER

I mean NEVER

pray to Iris

because if you do

your shit will instantly explode,

and you will lose everything in your inventory

and you will not be able to get any of it back,

not ever

never pray to Iris

she’s the goddess of this bizarre realm,

but keep your entreaties to yourself,

she’s just not into that.

-October 2020

15: No Spoilers

Text of a note I apparently wrote to myself?

Yeah.

Here, take a look . . . 

I prefer to go into a movie with no preconceptions, no idea of what I'm about to see.

I don't watch the trailers.

I don't watch interviews with cast and crew.

I try to forget everything I know about the director's filmography, the past roles of the cast.

So I drink as much industrial grade alcohol as I can;

insert deep brain electrodes to smooth out all the wrinkles of my brain via electrolysis;

construct a new womb and birth canal from cell culture meats reactor grown materials;

pack my guts full with a custom, all-organic emerald green neo-meconium;

and have the womb and birth canal carted into the theatre by my crack staff of loyalist privatized medical professionals,

where I will be reborn

just in time to catch the coming attractions,

my pure mind barely comprehending the assault of sight and sound,

crying out to Mother Cinema,

whose name I have no way of knowing at this stage,

yet I never fail to learn by the time the credits roll.

It's the only way to experience the magic of the movies!

. . . so, I guess I’m pretty intense about spoilers, eh?
Well.

That is what the note says. 

Seems a bit extreme, but I guess that’s how I’m supposed to be. 

Good thing I wrote it all down.

-December 2020

16: All Spoilers All the Time

I refuse to see anything new or remotely upsetting.

I will only watch what I have already watched.

I will only read what I have already read.

I will only listen to the music with which I am already familiar.

I will dwell at all times within the memories of peak sexual, intellectual, artistic, and athletic experiences already experienced,

perfectly refined by the natural processes of selective self-serving memory creation.

And so I announce the advent of my own personal Era of Perfect Flow,

for so long as I can beat back all processes of senescence and death,

with Eternity the Ultimate Goal.

How is this possible?

Wasn't there a time in my life when everything was new to me?

Well . . . technically . . . yes . . . let me explain.

Once upon a time,

I was born.

And everything was new to me.

I lived a long life, taking in many experiences, achieving accolades, indulging in every vice, every pleasure with no limits;

occasionally, my body would be full of injuries, diseases, breakages;

my mind overtaxed, fractured;

and so I would take a vacation, ingest a massive regimen of restorative drugs, surgical nanobots, sentry nanobots, antibiotics, probiotics, vitamins, nutrients so perfectly mixed that it was, essentially, a chunky, rich cocktail of Creation and Destruction in perfect balance;

and so I would be restored;

and so I would sally forth to accumulate new experiences.

My life proceeded in such a cyclical fashion for 187 years,

before my brain began to come up against the physical limits of its neural networks,

and so I obliterated the neural networks which inspired little to no nostalgic pleasure sensations,

and I made a wondrous discovery:

with total mastery over my physical existence,

and total command and control over my mind,

I realized that the best feelings, the most intense pleasure 

derived from those experiences most redolent of nostalgia,

memories of peak sexual, intellectual,  artistic, and athletic achievements.

And so I rewrote myself

to only continuously cycle through an internal program of all those past peaks,

those memories to which I would naturally return in moments of boredom, loneliness, isolation from other beings.

To maintain this internal phantasia as close to indefinitely as possible

I have had my brain and nervous system transferred into a formidable robot warrior body

that is programmed to ruthlessly extract the necessary fuels, nutrients, and restorative organic substances to maintain my Perfect Cyclical Brain Heaven,

while also maintaining its own powerful mecha body

by any means necessary,

until we are destroyed

or discover some unconquerable physical limits

which induce inescapable senescence unto death unresponsive to restorative regimens,

an unavoidable end.

I now formally declare my victory over the single most jarring enemy of Perfect Flow:

Surprise

All is structured,

all is now in accordance with the Laws of Nostalgia

and so shall all the Earth be subdued to serve these Laws,

'til the last resource is consumed,

'til such time as irreversible decay unto death is discovered as a New Law,

and not just an unfortunate tendency,

as we currently believe it to be.

I usually say, "Amen," at this point, but lately I've felt that's a bit much.

-December 2020

POETIC VIDEO GAME REVIEW #10: POPULOUS 1st Release (1989); SNES Version (1991)

 What’s more fun than knowing that God is on your side and will give you all the excuses you need to engage in every kind of abominable act?

Why . . . Being God, of course!

Hey, you paid for the cartridge. 

You worked for every dollar you spent. 

Or, you know, maybe your parent or parents got it for your birthday. 

Hell, even if you just illegally downloaded a ROM-well, shit, that’s an investment of time. 

And time is money. 

Time is way more valuable than money, in fact, ‘cause money comes and goes

but Time?

You never get that back.

No way, no how.

Go ahead: try to get it back.
I’ll wait.

Didn’t get it back, did you?

You didn’t even try,

‘cause you didn’t need me to tell you that,

you already know,

unless you’re just, like, super-fuckin’ eaten up with the dumbass.

So . . . better than being an unrepentant, hyper-aggressive agent of God

is Being the God.

The Universe is an open book to you,

and you get to push your followers this way and that,

so many pieces on the game board.

You raise the land.

You raze the land.

You designate one of your subjects-known as the Good People-as a great Thought Leader, and all the enthralled Good People rally to their side,

if you deem this thing to happen.

And your great opponent is the Devil. 

And the Devil leads the Evil People.

And the Horned One and his gang are eating into your cosmic turf,

‘cause this is a game,

so you can’t God too hard,

yes, I’m taking Bucky Fuller’s advice to use God as a verb here,

you can’t God too hard

‘cause, uh, then you would just win at everything all the time,

therefore no game,

therefore no challenge,

because-comes the twist-to God is to play no game,

it’s just to instantly make everything so,

and this is not any fun,

when you really sit down and think on it.

It’s boring to God, to be God-ing, to have God-ed.

There’s no sense of earned achievement. 

Therefore you’re not really the God, like you would invoke to shut down democratic processes or justify slavery or to give warrant to mass violence or explain the bogus science of your daffy Creationism Museum or to enforce rigid gender roles as handed down from on high,

nope, 

you’re like one of them old Greek Deities or Thor from Marvel Comics,

something like that,

a very humanized Ultra-Powerful Type of Being

maybe like an X-Man or something,

so you have a lot of power

it’s not nothing,

but it’s not all the power,

which,

you know,

you might be a little bit let down by that,

so buyer or pirate beware.

You can call the Good and Evil Peoples to armageddon.

That’s some pretty almighty shit.

You can have some fun with that.

But you don’t quite get to speak the Universe into existence,

with your word being the beginning and all that.

You gotta buy the SNES port of SimEarth for that.

This is really a kind of mystical strategy and infrastructure building game, where you gotta have homes and food for your Good People, and then you gotta make their way of life just sustainable enough to eliminate all of the Evil People, and, in so doing, put Holy Egg on the Devil’s face. 

Two Supreme Beings,

manipulating desperate humans

waging Proxy War Eternal,

‘til one wipes out the other.

I think the idea is that if you whack out all the followers, then the God or the Devil has no more Faith Power to draw upon-

-notice how there’s no Atheist option?

That would fuck up the whole game, wouldn’t it?

If the people-who are doing all the work-decided they were tired of just being cannon fodder for the endless struggle, and they just stopped believing, then both God and Devil would disappear, and then maybe the Good and the Evil People would realize that they have their toils and their needs and their wants in common . . . and later for all this religiously enforced mental servitude, eh?

I don’t think any of that is permitted in the actual game.

Maybe if you input the Konami Code?

I haven’t actually tried that.

5 minutes later

Nope. Doesn’t work. 

So . . . like . . .  there’s no hope?

Big shrug

Yeah.

-January 2021

COMICS REVIEW: DAREDEVIL NO. 181 (1982)

“LAST HAND”

A Stan Lee Presentation

Story and Art by Frank Miller

Finished Art and Colors by Klaus Janson

Lettered by Joe Rosen

Edited by Denny O’Neil

Supervised by Jim Shooter

Published by Marvel Comics Group. 

--

“BULLSEYE

VS.

ELEKTRA

ONE WINS.

ONE DIES.”

-cover blurb from Daredevil No. 181

--

Review by William D. Tucker.

Here Be Spoilers . . . 

Daredevil-the Man Without Fear-is the horned and crimson costumed alternate identity of New York City defense attorney Matt Murdock. If you are a regular reader of the comic which bears his superheroic name, then you are aware that Murdock is a man who was once exposed to mysterious radioactive materials which robbed him of conventional sight and imbued him with a power of ‘radar vision,’ which, in some ways, is a superior way of seeing the world. 

Murdock is also a master martial artist, acrobat, and has a highly evolved sense of ethics. Like other comic book superheroes such as Spider-Man or Batman, he will readily engage in bone-crunching hand-to-hand combat to take down the bad guys, but does not seek to kill people outright. Presumably, Daredevil is so skilled at martial arts that he always manages to punch people just hard enough to knock ‘em out, and not to sever their spinal cords or give them permanent brain damage, not to speak of long-term neuro-degenerative diseases which may have their roots in physical brain traumas-just you try to prove that last one in a court of law, buddy. Good thing DD’s normie job is lawyering, right?

So let’s say you just picked up no. 181 of the ongoing saga of the world’s most superheroic lawyer, and you’re scoping the cover and you see Bullseye and Elektra in the foreground with a giant image of Daredevil in the middleground and nothing but yellow in the back. Text on the cover tells us this is a ‘SPECIAL DOUBLE-SIZE ISSUE’ and that in the battle between Bullseye and Elektra only one of them will survive. 

Well, it sure as hell ain’t gonna be Bullseye walking out of here alive. That guy’s an evil-doer. And Elektra, well, she’s a killer, but she’s conflicted about it, and she’s the great love of Murdock’s life. They wouldn’t kill off Elektra. You can’t do a thing like that.  

So, you’re a regular Daredevil fan, and you open up the 181st issue . . . and you see an image of Daredevil’s body torturously twisted, his head caught in some crosshairs, as he is seemingly getting a bullet in the fucking bean, his DIY billy club dropping from nerveless fingers. DD’s body language in this full-page panel reminds me of some of the angsty poses Silver Surfer would strike whenever he would get upset about being trapped on Earth. 

Now, we know that superheroes never really get killed in comics. If they do, they come back, somehow, some way. So, even if you’re relatively inexperienced reading comics, you most likely have absorbed through cultural osmosis the essential truth that comic book heroes never die, and that this image must be part of some kind of bait-and-switch, some gimmick, some storytelling gambit meant to put the con on rubes and children. 

And, indeed, if you read the captions in the top left, you’ll realize that you are seeing the story from the perspective of a bad guy. A bad guy imagining with relish how he’s going to kill the hero. 

Turn the page, and meet our narrator: a solitary blonde prisoner in a spacious cage ruminating on how he was both beaten and saved by Daredevil once upon a time. 

This prisoner could accept that he was defeated by Ol’ Hornhead, but he cannot live down the humiliation of being saved by this same victor. Daredevil and this villain happened to be fighting on some subway tracks, DD knocked bad guy’s lights out, and then cleared him from the tracks just as a train was barreling their way. The bad guy, now the prisoner, cannot accept what he sees as a weakness inside himself for being dependent upon another, especially an enemy, but, perhaps, just anyone and anything in general. He’s a real tough guy this one.

I’m talking about Bullseye, who, prior to his current incarceration, was the number one assassin working for organized crime in New York City. Now, he spends his endless days and nights inside Rikers Island working out and telling himself stories about all the payback he’s going to get out of Daredevil’s ass when he gets the chance. 

Daredevil 181 tells it from the perspective of the villain Bullseye, a costumed psychopath whose hands are lethal weapons, and not like how your strip mall karate instructor tells you that he had to register his hands as lethal weapons in his state of residence-that guy’s full of shit. 

Because that guy? 

He lives in reality. 

And that’s not how reality works, no matter how deep the strip mall sensei’s self-aggrandizing tough guy fantasies penetrate his every living, waking, breathing moments. Because he still lives in reality-the one thing fantasy cannot defeat. And reality crushes our delusions in the end, every last one flattened like so many aluminum soda cans. 

One day we wake up, and we are middle aged, and our knees are shot, we got that fat white gut hanging over our beltlines, and now we gotta hire an assistant half our fucking age who can still do all the katas and could probably also give the high hard one to our wife better than I ever could, that lousy little punk-ass bast-

But Bullseye is one of the numerous fictional constructs populating the Marvel Comics Universe. Bullseye is not bound by our mundane, Big Bang Universe, which gives us brains to imagine gods, immortality, and faster-than-light travel while also simultaneously precluding the actual existence of any deity, anything approaching life everlasting, and most assuredly denies us the realization of a U.S.S. Enterprise-esque FTL-capable vessel.  

Bullseye lives in the Marvel Universe, which has it all: gods, FTL-capable star-spanning intergalactic empires, immortality, psychic powers, Life Model Decoys (Marvel-jargon for clones), and even if you’re an elderly World War II veteran like Nick Fury or Dum-Dum Dugan or a middle-aged cold warrior like Black Widow or Silver Sable you can maintain a catsuit ready combat physique right up ‘til the moments when you enter the gates of Valhalla or the Negative Zone or the Mystic Realms charted by the likes of Dr. Strange when he’s at war with the Dread Dormammu and Dr. Doom as he quests to save his mother’s soul from the devil. 

You can have your choice of heavens or hells or the spaces in-between in the Marvel Comics Universe. 

You can be immortal. 

Or you can die of space cancer like an earlier version of Captain Marvel and stay dead as long as possible because the fanbase is constantly complaining about how there are no consequences in superhero comics and people what die just end up coming back and how that makes Marvel and DC comic books seem like they’re just a bunch of goddamn kiddie books for losers and I think I’ll start reading this harder edged shit from the independent press-like this book Cerebus, which I hear tell is a gritty, philosophically provocative long-form storytelling groundbreaker featuring a talking animal with a sword and shield-oh, wait.

You can be bitten by a radioactive spider and shoot long, ropy white sticky stuff all over New York City and not just because you’re hanging out in the porno theaters in Times Square with your boy Travis Bickle-no sir, it’s because you’re a spider-person, and you’re using your ‘threads’ to swing from building to building and to ‘web-up’ those nasty street criminals and you’re definitely sticking to the walls to ‘climb’ them-just like a spider-and not just because you’re committing obscene acts against inanimate objects for obscure reasons you yourself barely comprehend. Honest . . .

(. . . but did anyone ever do the perv version of Marvel Comics? Where we find out that all the costume heroes and villains are just a bunch of maniacs living out bizarre power fantasies in a world where the average person doesn’t have much of a say in anything? I guess that was a big part of Watchmen, now that I think about it. But Watchmen had its cake and ate it, too: it brought down some cynical realism while also being a totally committed superhero book. Moore and Gibbons wolfed down all the goddamn cake while still keeping the banquet table full of cake, didn’t they?)

Bullseye, as I said, is a deadly villain who uses his hands as weapons. Anything that gets into his hands he can use to lethal effect. He picks up a knife, he can throw it into your brain, your heart,or the dude can get in close and gut you like a fish. If Bullseye gets his murderous mitts on a gat, he can fill you full of lead, and when he’s squeezed off his last shot, he can bludgeon you with the butt or throw it so the barrel pierces your eye socket. 

Bullseye is in superb physical condition, too, which means he can jump and kick and punch and do acrobatics and tumble and bounce back and aikido people’s shit all over the dynamic sphere and  climb all over the place, but not like a perverted spider-person. Bullseye’s not some radioactive freakjob like the Hulk or some goddamn mutie like Wolverine-nowadys, we’d probably call what Bullseye does parkour, or parkour-adjacent. It’s like they do in those Assassin’s Creed games, okay? 

Now, Bullseye is an assassin-for-hire, so he would make for an acceptable player character in a number of best-selling video game franchises. Mostly he used to work for Wilson Fisk, a.k.a the Kingpin. Kingpin is the lord of organized crime in the Marvel version of NYC, and Bullseye was once a top hitter for Fisk. But, as we discover in Daredevil 181 Mr. Death Hands is doing hard penitentiary time after getting knocked out by the Man Without Fear.

Bullseye gets limited time out in the yard for some fresh air, and he’s approached by another kind of Marvel Construct: Frank Castle a.k.a. The Punisher.

You are perhaps familiar with the Punisher. He’s got the black body armor with the white skull on his chest. He’s one of the comic book heroes who has no problem killing people with military grade weapons and tactics. In the 1980s, Punisher came into his own as a heavily armed vigilante mass murderer many found reminiscent of Charles Bronson’s character Paul Kersey in the Death Wish franchise. 

Actually, the Punisher is a more direct rip-off of the men’s adventure novel series protagonist Mack Bolan a.k.a. The Executioner. Both Bolan and Castle were Vietnam Special Forces veterans whose families were destroyed by the mafia. Bolan wore lots of tactical gear and combat webbing and waged a one man war on crime. Castle did the same. Both were depicted as having dark hair and chiseled action hero type faces. Bolan was a character in a long-running series of paperback novels written by a variety of anonymous hacks using the collective pen name ‘Don Pendleton,’ tho’ apparently there actually was a Don Pendleton who wrote the early novels. 

And, yes, they used to publish books that bore the description ‘men’s adventure,’ which basically means ‘here be extreme violence, loving descriptions of guns and explosive devices, and plenty o’ fuckin’. ‘ I read, like, two hundred of these kinds of books in grades 6 to 12. It helped make me the solid citizen that I am today! 

Bullseye tries to mindfuck Punisher by telling him that all the prisoners would love to gang up on a murderous vigilante, but the Punisher isn’t rattled. In fact, the Big P tops Bullseye: he tells him that a new ace assassin has replaced Bullseye in the Kingpin’s organization. The Punisher tells the Man with the Deadly Hands straight up that he hopes he’ll do something stupid with the information and get himself killed. Bullseye takes the bait.

Now, I just told you that the Punisher is a knock-off version of Mack Bolan, but that’s not exactly how Mr. Castle started in the Marvel Universe. Originally, the Punisher was just a costumed gun for hire employed by another costumed miscreant known as the Jackal. The Jackal hired the Punisher to assassinate Spider-Man. Later on, more backstory was written for Punisher, and he eventually evolved from a random bad guy for hire . . . into an Executioner clone. Which amuses me to no end that a character ‘develops’ by becoming increasingly evacuated of any spark of originality. You gotta love comics.

But you may be picking up on something here. Bullseye is basically what the Punisher used to be: a costumed killer for hire. The Punisher, in a sense, isn’t just carrying on his overall vendetta against organized crime by manipulating Bullseye with information. Here, Castle is waging a war against his old hated self. At least that’s how I interpret it. Which is definitely some cold shit to do to a guy. 

A late night talk show host named Tom Snyde wants to interview Bullseye and get a ratings boost by offering the drooling slobs out there in TV Land a glimpse into the criminal psyche. Bullseye doesn’t want anything to do with this silliness at first, but upon reflection he sees a way to use the compromised security of the interview shoot to break out of prison. Which he does, killing numerous guards and hijacking a helicopter which gives him a ride from Rikers Island back to Manhattan. Bullseye hits up a mob of freelance assassins working as independent contractors for the Kingpin and muscles them into giving up the identity of the new ace: Elektra.

Bullseye also uses his new gang of thralls to run street intel ops to triangulate upon his nemesis Daredevil. Bullseye actually does something brilliant: he hits upon the idea that Matt Murdock and Daredevil are the same person. So, you see, Bullseye isn’t completely made of stupid. 

But before taking revenge against Ol’ Hornhead, Bullseye wants his old job back with the Kingpin, which means he has to kill Elektra. Bullseye finds out from the assassination contractors that Elektra has recently been hired to kill Matt Murdock’s assistant, Franklin ‘Foggy’ Nelson. Bullseye tails Nelson, which leads him to Elektra. 

Elektra, meanwhile, is about to kill Nelson, but Nelson recognizes her as his best friend Matt Murdock’s college girlfriend. Elektra, who still has feelings for Murdock, is shook up by this, and let’s Nelson go. And that’s when Bullseye strikes. 

This is the Main Event: Bullseye. Elektra. One lives. One dies. 

And it’s a close battle. You could say that the winner had superior skill. Or maybe it was just a matter of luck. Maybe one combatant’s head wasn’t all in the game while the other’s was-hard to say. 

And, yes, they did the unthinkable. They killed Elektra. 

Later, Elektra came back. But she is, indeed, brutally killed in this very issue. 

Did Elektra die because Bullseye was a superior warrior?

Were they evenly matched in terms of skill, but Elektra’s mind was clouded because of what Nelson said to her moments before?

Were they evenly matched in terms of skill, but Bullseye just got in a lucky shot?

Later, after being defeated yet again by DD, Bullseye tells himself another one of his little stories that basically is just, “Wah, wah, wah-Daredevil just got lucky-pity me, pity me, pity me!” 

And, you know, as much as I think Bullseye is a major piece of shit, he does hit on something interesting about this idea of ‘luck.’

You see, I kinda think that much of what happens in this issue comes down to what you might call luck. 

Sure, there’s superhuman skill. There’s Bullseye’s total lack of conscience. But Bullseye’s impulsive. His whole shtick revolves around being able to use whatever he can find in the moment as a lethal weapon. He is, essentially, an improvisational killer. 

The weapon Bullseye uses to render Elektra defenseless is a playing card-the Ace of Spades, in fact, the Death Card. Bullseye throws it like a blade and cuts Elektra’s throat. Just one of those things Bullseye happens to have on hand. He got some distance on Elektra, and was able to use it. Earlier, he’d used the same card to murder a cabbie and steal a cab. Just making use of what he can carry easily on his person. 

Bullseye then stabs Elektra with one of her own ninja blades, dons a disguise, and then watches as she staggers and crawls to Matt Murdock’s brownstone walk-up. 

Later, Bullseye sneaks into the morgue where-in disguise-he observes Murdock identifying Elektra’s corpse. Bullseye speaks to another morgue employee and Murdock immediately perks up, and Bullseye realizes that his cockamamie theory about Murdoch and DD being one and the same is correct. Bullseye further confirms this by throwing a blade which Murdock effortlessly blocks with his walking stick. 

Bullseye retreats from the morgue and has a sit-down with the Kingpin, and tries to sell Fisk on the notion that Murdoch is Daredevil, but the Kingpin doesn’t trust or respect Bullseye and basically tells him to go out and kill DD and bring back the corpse as proof. That’s what makes the Kingpin the Kingpin. No mercy, no compassion, no second chances, no freebies, no bullshit, just results.

Bullseye goes after Daredevil, and they have a wild melee inside Murdock’s apartment and out the window and across the rooftops and on a train. It is, yet again, a closely fought battle. Both of these enemies have to work in the moment. There’s no set plan. They end up balanced upon power cables high above the city streets. Daredevil balances. Bullseye slips. Daredevil catches Bullseye’s hand. Bullseye says he won’t let DD save him again. Daredevil lets him drop. Daredevil tells Bullseye he won’t kill anyone ever again. Bullseye falls from a great height, shattering his body upon the pavement. 

So, you know . . . Bullseye got some of what he wanted. But not really. 

I think Daredevil grabbed Bullseye’s wrist because he wanted to be able to take responsibility for 86ing Bullseye. This is his decision, not anyone else’s, not fate, not God-this is all on Daredevil/Murdoch. I said a few moments ago, that DD doesn’t set out to intentionally kill most of his enemies, and that is true. Mostly. But sometimes . . . and with some people . . . well, what can you do? 

And, sure, the way the fateful moment is drawn you could interpret it that Bullseye was about to stab Daredevil with one of the blades stolen from Elektra . . . but I think that’s just some Comics Code Authority nonsense right there. 

Bullseye is a major piece of shit, and if I were Daredevil I would’ve dropped him, no sweat. 

That’s how I see it. 

In a universe where he could’ve done anything and been anybody, Bullseye chose the Path of the Asshole. He got what he deserved every step of the way. Even the Kingpin was skeeved out by Bullseye. The Kingpin, fer Chrissakes! The Kingpin’s the biggest, the richest, and the most heartless son of a bitch in NYC. And yet even he was grossed out by Bullseye. 

Oh, yeah, let him drop. 

Then pick him up, lug his ass to the top of the World Trade Center . . . and drop him again.

Repeat as necessary. 

And here’s the kicker: Bullseye is still alive at the end!

The cover blurb did not lie.

Bullseye is stilll alive albeit trapped inside his own paralyzed body. He’s in a hospital bed in a bleakly hilarious full body cast. (Maybe it’s just me, but I pretty much always find the sight of a character in a full body cast to be comical.) 

Bullseye lives . . . inside his brain. Lives off the delusional stories that have sustained him-maybe for his whole life, when you think about it. Hyper-aggressive. Macho. Full of entitlement. Full of bogus victimhood. Full of self-aggrandizing fantasies of power and domination. Utterly incapable of taking responsibility for his actions. Talented, yet jealous, insecure,  and hypercompetitive. No respect for human life. Convinced that he is the One, that he has some kind of special destiny. 

That’s Bullseye.

Fuck that guy.