Ghost Bath|Moonlover

Just discovered this amazing band from China on the cheerfully named Depressive Suicidal Black Metal page on Facebook. The full album is out in March but this first single from it, Golden Number, is 9 minutes of atmospheric awesomeness. :)

[bandcamp width=350 height=470 album=1230631909 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=2ebd35 tracklist=false]

Snow Business Like Being Underemployed on a Day Like This!

OK, so it is properly doing my head in being as underemployed as I am (to the point that I'm actually starting to apply for jobs in Edinburgh despite that being a 3 hour round trip every day.) but despite that it does mean that I get to go and play in the snow when C is off to work and Little Ms. X is away to school. It also means that I get to take some absolutely lovely pictures of the local kirkyard in the snow.

[gallery type="circle" ids="923,924,925,926,927,928,929,930,931,932,933,934,935,936,937,938,939,940,941,942,943,944"]

 

Blood Will Have its Season | Joe Pulver

Two Pulver Posts in a row!

A couple of weeks ago I won a copy of Blood Will Have its Season by Joe Pulver through the regular book give away during the Lovecraft Ezine web show. It's a digital copy and as I don't have an ebook reader I've been dipping in and out of it on my phone -which makes for slow going as I'm not the biggest fan of reading on a screen. Last night I read the titular story and I just wanted to say HOLY FUCK NUTS BATMAN! That's probably one of the most disturbing short stories I've ever read in all ma puff! Seriously, seriously messed up. It's a story of The King in Yellow and I really can't say much more about it than that without giving anything away. Damn I do love Pulver's work.



Also: Content warning for sexual violence.

Pulver in Yellow

Joe Pulver, if you haven't already heard of him (and why the hell haven't you??), fuses beat, noir, pulp and high weird with startling skill. He's also the go to person when it comes to Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow stories. Joe has written god knows how many King in Yellow stories over the years --well I suppose he knows how many too, as does Mike Davis of the Lovecraft Ezine as Mike is currently preparing to put out volume one in a the collected Yellow stories of Joe Pulver! Excited? You could say so!

I find it most fitting that Joe's work is being collected this year as 2015 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Robert W. Chambers as well as the 120th anniversary of the first publication of his collection The King in Yellow. I get the feeling this year is definitely going to have a maddening yellow hue to it. :D

Keep an eye on the Lovecraft Ezine for news on when the book is going to be released. I'm sure I'll probably be posting somewhat excitedly about it here too. :)

[caption id="attachment_898" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Cover design by Steve Santiago www.illustrator-steve.com/[/caption]

 

Now, Mike Davis, a quick message for you.

He Gave This Homeless Man $100 and Followed Him, What Happened Next Will...

...be none of your god damned business.

I've seen a number of videos going around Facebook and Twitter over the last couple of months where an individual will give a homeless person a sum of cash, usually $100, and they will then follow the person to see what they spend it on. The assumption being that they are going to spend it on alcohol of drugs. Then, I assume as I've never clicked on the links, there is some heart warming story where they spend it on someone else or on, shock horror, food or something. These videos really grind my gears because it is no one's business what a person spends their money on. If you buy your groceries is it your business what the person on the check out spends their cash on? For all you know they may be double dropping acid every night and smoking crack to get out of bed in the morning, it's none of your business though. The same goes for homeless people as for everyone else.

Added to this is that these videos help to cement the notion of the deserving and the undeserving poor. Homeless person X is obviously deserving poor as they sent the money to their elderly mother (or whatever) whereas homeless person Y is undeserving (Boo! Hiss!) as they spent it on drink/drugs. It doesn't matter that the $100 meant that their lives were a little easier for a short time and that it meant that they had a brief reprieve from having to beg, borrow or steal in order to get through the day.

I was homeless and living on the streets for a number of years and got by through begging, busking and selling the Big Issue and if someone had given me £100 back then I would have been able to take a few days off trying to make money on the streets, and would therefore have been free'd from the threat of violence, the dirty looks, the random abuse and the condescension of the general public for a while. I wouldn't have spent my money on something that would gain the approval of these video makers, I would most likely have gotten shit faced drunk and probably bought a new pair of boots. And you know what? It wouldn't have been anyone's business but that would have drastically improved my life; even if for a short time.

Grrrr.

OK, rant over. Normal service to be resumed shortly...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="361"] The author in his glory days[/caption]

 

Writing Excuses 10.1 & 10.2

Being a person who is aspiring to be an aspiring writer I regularly listen to the Writing Excuses podcast with Mary Robinnette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells. It's a great wee 'cast and I've picked up some great advice over the last couple of years. For the start of the new year, and the beginning of Season 10, they have modified the format of the 'cast and this year is going to be along the lines of a writer's workshop/master-class with writing prompts and exercises coming in each episode. I'm going to try and keep up with the 'cast and will post my exercises here. Unless what I write is frickin awful that is. :D

We're on week two now so here are my exercises from both weeks.

Episode 10.1

[audio http://www.writingexcuses.com/podpress_trac/web/4501/0/Writing_Excuses_10_1_Ideas.mp3 ]

 

Write down five different story ideas in 150 words or less from these five sources:

1. From an interview or conversation you've had.


2. From research you've done.


3. From observation.


4. From a piece of media.


5. From a piece of music.

1. Three old people are sat on a train. They are on a long journey across the country, going on holiday at the same spot they have visited every summer for years. People get on and off the train, young and old, and the train ends up rather crowded. They normally reserve a seat for their departed friend/spouse. However the train pulls in at a lonely station and a single passenger boards their carriage. He's an old man, and as dishevelled as the station he boarded from. There are no other free seats and so after brief discussion they offer their spare seat to him. The train continues its journey the number of passengers thins; leaving the four of them alone in the carriage. He doesn't leave their table as he is in the middle of telling them his horrible story. His story involves human sacrifice, dark rituals, ancient rites and evil beings summoned. They of course don't believe him. He alights at the stop before theirs. As they depart the train the slate sky and the wan silhouette it casts of the standing stones stop the nearby hill take on an ominous cast as they recognise them from his horrible tale.

Source: Ok, so that's slightly more than 150 words but wevs. :) I got this idea from a conversation I had with Little Ms. X on the train to Glasgow one day. She was rather perturbed by the sight of a small group of old people being rather loud and raucous. She is only a teen remember and 'old people' are still very much an alien category to her at times. :)

2. A team of student archaeologists take part in a summer vacation project to survey the Abbey of Thelema, as used by Aleister Crowley and his disciples for occult practices on the isle of Sicily. As the project goes on and they carry out standard building surveys and map the painting on the walls they begin to have strange, phantasmagorial and psycho-sexual dreams involving rituals, orgies, and worlds behind worlds. What they find there threatens to tear the world apart.

Source: A few years ago I had the idea of carrying out an archaeological survey of the Abbey but there's no way I could have gotten funding for it. It also occurred to me at the time that the project sounded like the beginning of a really clichéd horror movie. :)

3. The motorways of Britain are mirrored in another world by huge rivers of surging, raging water. These rivers carry the dead of a million worlds, including our own, on towards the heart of the meta-universe where they are devoured by the all creator. A being, beast, machine, that is beyond the comprehension of any mortal creature. We are little more than a small part of a self sustaining eternal entity's means of sustaining its own existence. As individuals we are beyond insignificant. The protagonist is sensitive to these flows and as he looks deeper into what it is that he feels he discovers that we are all actually sensitive to the final path we take to being consumed, hence our works and buildings following the path of these extra-universal currents.

Source: On my way to and from work I have to cross a footbridge that spans the insanely busy M8 motorway. As the cars flow past below me it always seems as though there is something tugging me in the direction of the traffic flow. It's probably something to do with the motion I see out of the corner of my eye but it is certainly a spooky effect.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="597"] That footbridge right there. (It's busier than this when I'm going to and from work)[/caption]

4.  In the Highlands of Scotland a blinding light turns night into day and causes the emergency services to scramble. When the police, fire brigade and ambulances arrive they find a small village has appeared and there are a group of just over 5,000 people there with no memory of how they got there and only dim recollections of who they are. The area is first quarantined and then they are ferried off to a variety of military bases in the Highlands. As the story develops it is discovered that they have disappeared at various points throughout human history, some may even be from the future, only to reappear now. They were abducted by a parallel sentient universe which is about to collide with ours, the impact potentially destroying both universes in a new big bang. The sentient universe has figured out a way to allow the universes to meld rather than impact. Only when all the returned are together and touching can the sentient universe communicate, in a way, with our universe.

Source: The 4400, a pants American genre TV Series that could have been really good. That smooshed up with a heap of vaguely understood, misunderstood and totally misapplied brane theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wey_sso-fk

5.  A woman is walking through an inner-city area in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. She ritualistically touches items about her person, clothes, jewellery, and so on, each of which tells a story about how she came to be where she is, like stations of the cross on her body. Each story is connected to the object and tells a different tale, some supernatural –some not, of joys and sorrows, missed opportunities and moments where she has excelled herself. She slowly sheds these items til she is naked. People in the street avert their eyes and move reverently out of her way as she has the air of the sublime about her which makes her terrible and awesome to behold. At her journey's end her scars are all bared and she meets her apotheosis in a bare room in an abandoned tenement building.

Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAeTywPiP4

 

Episode 10.2

[audio http://www.writingexcuses.com/podpress_trac/web/4514/0/Writing_Excuses_10_2_I_Have_an_Idea.mp3 ]

 

Using last week's five story ideas:

• Take two of them and combine them into one story.


• Take one and change the genre underneath it.


• Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it.


• Take the last one and have the character make the opposite choice.

Take two of them and combine the into one story.

I'll do this with numbers two and four.

As the student archaeologists carry out their survey they get the detestable dreams as in the original however as the dreams grow in intensity they realise that they are all sharing the same dream and that the figures they see in the dream are trying to communicate with them. The figures are the disappeared and they are seeking a way back into our universe. The students discover a pattern in the paintings on the walls of the temple that depict a ritual, a configuration, that may allow this to occur. They carry out the ritual and at the climax the personalities of all 5000+ of the disappeared are plunged into the students minds. They become part of this gigantic collective consciousness that is able to communicate with the sentient universe and so they become part of the plan to merge the two universes in order to save both from destruction. They have scant years to prepare the population of the Earth for the coming change. They come to realise that this is also occurring on every planet with sapient life in the universe and slowly they begin to share consciousness with the beings on these other planets. A foreshadowing of the merged universe that is to come.

Take one and change the genre underneath it.

I'll do this with number five and that is the one that I feel doesn't have the most clearly defined genre so rather than changing the genre I'm going to try and change it into a genre story, a fantasy story.

The basic premise is the same. A woman walking a ritual path towards apotheosis, using item about her body as talismans to allow her to relive events from her past. In this story though she is walking along a marble black and white chequered path that cuts across a desolate moorland. Above her the stars wheel through the night sky as time accelerates and the world nears its end. She has been a warrior in her life and now she has to walk this path on a final battle with her past deeds in order to stop the cataclysmic events that are unfolding all across her world. There is a magical apocalypse occurring and reality is being undone. She is blessed and cursed in that she has become immune to the effects of magic, ironically through a magical battle many years in her past, and so is one of only a handful of people who can walk this path between the realms of the magic and the mundane. Her talismans and the ritual of remembering her past, which has involved a plenitude of both the magic and mundane, allows her to keep the balance needed to stay on the path.

Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it.

I'll do this with number one though swapping the genders makes little difference though.

Three young people, not long out of school so late teens-early 20s, are on the train to a remote location in Northern England. The boy/girlfriend of one of them has recently died after a sudden illness and so the remaining couple are taking their friend away to get away from their home town and all the things that remind him/her of their loss. They take up a table and put a carrier bag of beer on the spare seat to stop anyone else sitting down. The train rapidly fills up. The train pulls up at a small run down station in the middle of nowhere and a young woman carrying a small baby boards. There are no seats left so they move their bag of beer to let her sit down.

She introduces herself and refers to the baby as 'Kid'. She has a strange air about her. She looks completely normal, wearing sports clothes and is about the same age as the three however there is something off putting about her. She takes a beer from the bag and starts telling them the story of her family and the father of her baby and how she's taking her baby back to it's father, she points out of the window to a mountain in the distance saying that he lives in the highest house on the mountain and that he's going to devour both her and the baby. She seems pleased by this.

She gets off at a station at the foot of the mountain leaving the three talking about how her story was obviously nonsense and she is probably a 'care in the community' case.  Before they reach the next stop however they decide to get off and take the next train back the way they came to see if they can find her just in case either she is going to do some harm to herself or the baby or, though none of them say it, in case her rambling story was true.

Hi-jinks, no doubt, ensue.

Take the last one and have the character make the opposite choice

So, this is number three. I know number three would probably have gelled quite well with number four but that would be too easy.

The protagonist is aware of this strange energy that is connected to the motorways but chooses to ignore it, tries to put it out of mind. The feelings grow stronger though and as the feeling grows he finds it occupies his dreams and all his waking thoughts. Eventually he takes to drink to try to numb the feeling and begins to drink himself into oblivion every night. He then begins blacking out and starts waking up on the side of the motorway. A couple of times he wakes up in police cells after having been picked up walking down the hard shoulder of the motorway. The feeling grows until he can see, when he looks at major roads and motorways, these rivers of corpses flowing eternally onwards in a great wave of death and decay. One day he can't take it any more and walks into the river.

Free Speech? What's That?

There is no such thing as free speech.

After the horrible slaughter in Paris yesterday there are many people crying out that this is an attack on free speech and that we must support Charlie Hebdo in the aftermath of this assault. There has even been the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, I am Charlie, trending on Twitter. There has also been #KillAllMuslims but fuck those people, seriously, fuck those racist jerks right in the ear.

People have been commenting all day today about the importance of freedom of speech and how it is one of the highest values of western civilisation. I have some major issues with this –and not just that the notion of there being a 'western civilisation' is ridiculous.* No, it is the notion that despite the fact that all actions have a cost the act of speech is somehow free of cost. So, there. There is no such thing as free speech.

I know that this is a highly unpopular notion given the reverence with which liberals, and some on the left, treat free speech but I just don't see how it is anything other than a pipe dream, and a dangerous and defacto pro-fascist one at that.

I suppose I should explain myself somewhat as I can hear the gasp of horror as both my readers clutch their hands to their chests and faint with shock.

OK.

This may meander slightly.

In the UK we have a number of far right fascist groups that have got varying degrees of visibility, activity, and popularity. Chief amongst these are the British National Party, the National Front and Combat 18/Blood and Honour. All of these groups were formed to use violence as a way of imposing their political ideology and starting a race war in the United Kingdom. A large part of their tactics was to dominate the streets through marches and beating those of opposing political ideologies who attempted to put their argument across on the high street -through selling papers and handing out leaflets, you know the kind of thing, and through spreading terror amongst non-white populations.

They were prevented from doing this in the UK as militant trade unionists, communists, and anarchists met them with force on the streets and basically beat them back under the rock from which they crawled. There's a really good documentary on this that you can watch here(LINK).As a result of this the BNP decided to change their tactics and attempted to become a regular political party.

Now that probably sounds ideal to your average liberal type, you know the sort -wears cardigans, eats cheese, listens to Radio 4, as now the frightful beasts would have their awful ideology exposed to the light of open debate and it would be shown to be nothing but vile fear and hatred. Rational debate would soon put an end to such dreadful things as racism and people being all loud and uncouth on match days.

Yeah, well, we don't live in this liberal la la land and unfortunately our society if riven with racism and bigotry. Admittedly most of this isn't the hateful racism of groups like the BNP or new kids on the block Britain First; it's more your casual common or garden racism that thinks “[Racial Group X] are just different, got nuffink personal against 'em like. Know what I'm saying?” No, and these people, your Combat 18 and National Front sociopaths, didn't go away and nor did their ideas. They may not have been able to organise openly until recently but they are still there and amongst these people there is a sliding scale of fuckwittery.

Now, about five years ago the British National Party were trying to canvas in Glasgow for the upcoming European Elections and at every turn people in Glasgow would jeer at them and hound them off the streets. Sometimes slightly more physically than others. Either way it was made clear that they weren't wanted. When I was talking about this on Facebook some of my more liberal friends were claiming that people doing this were curtailing their freedom of speech and so were in the wrong, or, as some fine people put it, “You're just as bad as the fascists for doing this.” Which, to me, is just plain offensive. Just, I'm sure, as it would have been offensive to people like the 43 Group who were Jewish veterans of the British Army who took the fight to the British Union of Fascists on their return from WWII.

You see, what the 43 Group understood, as did those who beat the National Front, BNP and co. off the streets of the UK throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, is that if you allow fascists to openly spread their hatred and bigotry people die. It doesn't go directly from a group like the BNP having a stall unopposed on the local high street to their being Jews rounded up into ghettos –human society is far more complex than a simple action film narrative allows for.

What allowing fascist groups to practice their 'free speech' does is it gives confidence to others on the far right, it allows them to feel that their views are acceptable and widely held. This gives them the confidence to act upon their convictions. This then leads to people getting beaten, to homes being burned out, to people being murdered. Speech is not free, sometimes the price of it can be people's lives.

From this it may be presumed that I would therefore support calls for the government to legislate against certain groups –to curtail their freedom of speech in order to protect lives. This is something I am opposed to completely. The interests of the state and the people who live beneath it are rarely aligned, something that should be patently obvious if we look at the raft of austerity measures presently plunging huge swathes of the population into desperate poverty and driving others to suicide. No, I do not feel that real politics happens at the level of government or the state. Real politics happens in our communities and our workplaces. That is the arena where fascists must be denied their 'free speech' and where work to prevent their fear and hatred must take place. Unfortunately the community and the workplace as a place of politics has been arena seemingly abandoned by most for a long time now with lefty groups preferring to organise on university campuses (student loans filling party coffers through subs and freshers fairs) or to arrange rally after rally about things happening halfway around the globe(whilst rattling collection buckets all the way).

So I won't be changing my Twitter profile pic to a picture of Mohammed in the name of free speech. Not because I have any problem with annoying Muslims or poking fun at Islam –it's a religion and all religions are equally bloody absurd, but because it would be a pointless gesture aimed squarely at annoying people who had fuck all to do with this violence and who are, in all likelihood, utterly repulsed by it. Why on Earth would I want to do that? I'm a, reasonably, nice person! Nor will I be claiming to stand in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. It's a shit rag that punts racism, sexism, and homophobia as edgy humour. Nor will I bleat about attacks on free speech as there is no such thing as free speech, something the fuckwits with the machine guns patently understand.

Anyway, I feel sorry for those people who have suffered and who have lost loved ones because of these bastards. I feel anger at the bastards who are using this as an excuse to attack mosques and to further the fascist agenda. And I feel exasperation at those bleating over free speech as they are maintaining the delusion that there is such a thing and that we live in a liberal fairy tale rather than a complex, dirty and confusing cluster fuck of a world.

Also. Why the fuck is my first post of 2015 about something like this? Sod this, I'm off for a fag.

*I'm of the opinion that civilisation is a process of developing social and cultural complexity.