So you say you want a revolution?

Dear Exalted Leader,

Well, ain't this a kick in the pants? On the bright side, oh Opulent Oppressor, isn't it nice to see your citizens taking a more active role in civic affairs?

Well, no, I suppose for you, it's probably not.

Possibly you're confused. You always thought that this was a great country. You added another room onto the massage parlor wing of your palace just last week for crying out loud, who could possibly have anything bad to say about a country that affords you that kind of lifestyle, am I right?

Unfortunately Supreme One, your average citizen sees things a bit differently. I don't mean to imply that you are out of touch, oh Munificent Lord. I know from the reading material distributed by the state news agency that you are a man of the people. That time the brakes failed on your motorcade, you even became a man among the people, and shortly a man on top of the people.

I know also that you grew up the son of itinerant scorpion farmers and achieved your present revered position through hard work and the grace of God, grace in this case manifesting in the form of many hulking men in matching uniforms and a greater than average number of ranking officials who "just happened" to be standing under a balcony when someone dropped a wheelbarrow full of bricks.

That said Supreme Sovereign, you might have overlooked a thing or two. You are, after all, only human, or possibly semi-divine, depending on the status accorded you in your most recent press release.

I'm not sure it qualifies as holding the line if the line consists exclusively of you.

Lucky for you, I live to serve. I've prepared a brief questionnaire. Your answers will help me get a bead on the exact nature of your citizens' “preoccupations”, and possibly help me calculate such helpful data as how many parts of you will be hanging in what areas of your capital city by the end of this calendar year.

These questions may seem strange and a bit, um, pointed to you, but that’s just so that your staggering genius can be properly filtered for the consumption of my mediocre western intellect. Think nothing of it, August Executive.

***

1. In the most recent election, what percentage of the vote in excess of the first hundred did you receive?

2. Your victory feast consisted of:

A) A magnificent banquet.

B) Your opponent’s magnificent banquet.

C) Your opponent.

D) Your opponent’s village.

3. If I were to interview your most prominent political enemy, I would most likely hear:

A) Critique of your policies.

B) Lots of anxious questions along the lines of “You’re not recording, right?”

C) Complaints that your last check didn’t clear.

D) Complaints that no one has emptied the pee bucket in his cell and that the gruel has more glass in it than usual.

E) The sound of sand slowly filling a shallow depression in an out of the way place.

4. If asked about your favorite historical figure, you would cite:

A) Yourself.

B) Yourself in a past life.

C) Vlad the Impaler.

D) Gandhi.

E) The guy who shot Gandhi.

5. When the CIA visits, they bring:

A) Weapons to sell you.

B) Weapons to sell your enemies.

C) Weapons to point directly at you.

D) A quiche.

6. Does the phrase “just because” ever appear on arrest warrants in your country? Does it ever substitute for arrest warrants in your country? Are you right now furrowing your brow in confusion over the word “warrant”?

7. Are women in your society treated like chattel? Is their treatment inferior to chattel? Is there a distinct and widely recognized differentiation between the two things? I realize that this problem might exist independently of your government, oh Lofty Potentate, but I think you’ll agree that not attending your seventh wife’s 14th birthday party didn’t set a very good example.

8. Does your state-sanctioned religion draw a clear and discernible distinction between yourself and your Supreme Being? If so, how often do you claim to be in concert with said Supreme Being? How often do Its instructions include phrases like “heads on pikes”, “down to three generations”, or “death to the” followed by a disquietingly vague, ambiguously-defined plural noun?

9. Do you assume that the phrase “free speech” refers to a particularly generous calling plan?

10. How many death warrants have you signed just while reading this? How many have you personally carried out while reading this? How many times did you look up from this document while doing so?

***

Please forward your responses at your earliest convenience, but try not to take too long about it, oh Decorous Dictator. You know that new sport that’s become all the rage over the last week, the one with the baseball bats and the scarecrow hanging from the lamppost? That’s not really a sport sir. And the crude but unmistakable resemblance between said scarecrow and your own person is not merely your usual egocentrism skewing your perspective.

>From: albrinklow@gmail.com

>To: TripoliWhammy@libya.net

>CC: Al-BashfulBashir@sudan.darfur.org, ManamaCanal@Bahrain.com, DamascusMan@Syria.net, DjiboutiCall@Guelleh.com, IranIranSoFar@Persepolis.org, MuscatScratchFever@Oman.net

And monopolies are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.

Please allow me to be the bearer of terrible, horrible, god-awful, unthinkable news: AT&T has bought out T-Mobile.

There are some to whom this turn of events may come as a shock. But to those who are knowledgeable in certain arcane lore, and who are privy to certain eldritch secrets concerning the various and sundry natures of the universe and its hidden corners, this event, like so many others, was foretold.

You see, once before, in the long-forgotten, primordial age of the early 1980s, AT&T was hit with a devastating antitrust suit (you could do that to a company in those days) and forced to split up into various smaller, ostensibly competing companies. But over the course of 30 odd years and many high-profile mergers, AT&T has gradually congealed back into the very same monstrosity.

How could this have happened? Well, we must understand first that AT&T is not a company as we think of it. It is, in fact, not entirely of this world. It hearkens from a place where the laws of nature as we know them do not apply, and from which, sometimes, when the stars are right and our plane crosses ever so briefly with theirs, blasphemous, inhuman things will immigrate to our realm.

Some believed that AT&T was dead. But as the writings of Abdul Alhazred assure us, that is not dead that can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die. AT&T was, AT&T is, and AT&T shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, It walks serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.

While there are those who have dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept AT&T as a guide, they would have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with AT&T; for it is written in the Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of a single minute of roaming time.

All these Blacknesses are lesser than AT&T, who guardeth the Gateway; AT&T who will guide the rash one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnameable Devourers. For AT&T is UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF LIFE!

Even as we speak, the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn is nebulously recombining in its hateful original form. Its attorneys on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. It must have been trapped by the verdict whilst within its black abyss, or the world would be by now screaming with poor reception and marginal internet speed.

But who knows the end? What was risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in Bedminster NJ, and decay spread across the tottering regulatory agencies of men. A time will come-but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do no survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity, and remain Verizon customers.

hell-wind-titan blur-black wings-Whitacre save me-the three-lobed burning eye...

True tales of social awkwardness!

I'm not exactly what you'd call a "people person." In fact, I'm barely even what you would call a "person" by most workable definitions.

As such, I sometimes encounter difficulties in what you might consider daily, routine social interactions. The things that, in my mind, are appropriate to say sometimes turn out to be...not.

Often it's all a matter of context. You have to know your audience. And you have to know how you and your audience differ. For example, I like Johnny Cash, particularly "Folsom Prison Blues":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7gV5C5mB7A%EF%BB%BF

Ahhh. That's good stuff.

But not everyone is a Cash fan, apparently. Case in point, a group of acquaintances who shall remain nameless for the time being. About two years ago, just in passing, one of them mentioned he was taking a trip to Reno, to which I replied:

"Well, I'd come with you, but I try to stay out of that town. See, I once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die."

I realized instantly that I had made a mistake. Everyone's body language told me in less than half a second that:

A) They were not familiar with that song.

B) They had no context whatsoever on what I had just said.

and C) They were all looking for the fastest route out of that room, and I mean now.

It was without exaggeration the single most uncomfortable moment I've ever experienced. You could just feel all of the oxygen leave the room. I did my best to explain myself, but it was pointless, there is no recovering from that. That is the one true Point of No Return.

You could say it was their fault for leading what must have been pretty sheltered lives, as far as I judge such things. But then again, maybe it's just not a good idea for me to go saying stuff like that no matter who I'm hanging out with.

On the bright side, it's good to have a yardstick for awkward silences. For the rest of my life I can assess any given pause and say to myself, "Well, that was pretty bad, but at least it wasn't as bad as that one time."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some things to attend to. If your head explodes with dark forebodings too, I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

At the Gates of Banality.

Usually when fate drops something into my path, it's an anvil. Or a safe, or just a very big rock. Once it was a hot dog stand, that was a weird day.

This time, though, it was a library book. Not so much dropped in my path as left, quite innocently, on a bench as I sauntered by (yeah, I saunter from time to time. No big deal, just something I do when I want to talk or stroll with a leisurely gait).

The book's title? "At the Gates of Darkness." Catchy, isn't it? Apparently it's written by a Raymond E Feist. I could swear I've heard that name somewhere before, although possibly just in a Groucho Marx movie.

The cover also informs me that this is "Book Two of the Demonwar Saga." Apparently when demons go to war, they spawn a compound word. You just can't communicate warring demons with two separate words. Cannot be done.

From the back cover:

Ten years after the terrible Darkwar finally ended, catastrophe once again threatens to engulf Midkemia and Kelewan, as the demon hordes continue their relentless quest to infiltrate this realm of magic and wonder. . . .

Couple things spring to mind:

1. I'm glad they went out of their way to tell me that the Darkwar was terrible. I can imagine a Darkwar being kind of pleasant in an offbeat way, so the distinction is very important.

2. Apparently there was a Darkwar, and now there is a Demonwar. The author blurb informs me that there are also sagas pertaining to a Riftwar and a Serpentwar. There's no danger of running out of things to war with, is what I'm saying.

Continuing from the back:

To protect their world from the savage demon hordes, the Black Sorcerer Pug and Midkemia's clandestine protectors, the Conclave of Shadows, forged an uneasy alliance of formidable magical talents. Together, this brave band of wizards, demon masters, warriors, and elves defeated the brutal Demon King Maarg and turned back the onrushing death tide.

Question: Shouldn't that be a "deathtide"? I think if wars deserve compound words, tides should as well.

Honestly though, sounds like the Conclave of Shadows knows what they're doing. Of all the tides that you would consider it important to turn back, death tide has gotta be at the top of the list. I wonder if they've ever considered changing the name though? "Conclave of Shadows" sounds a little, I dunno, shadowy?

Battling the Demon Legion has taken a heavy blood toll on the valiant and dedicated magician, claiming the lives of nearly all those he loves. Though he is racked by despair and rage, Pug knows that the time for mourning must wait. Putting aside his pain, he and the Conclave and their allies—the cold-blooded master spy Jim Dasher; the fearsome young Knight-Adamant Sandreena; her former lover the necromancer Amirantha; two renegade Star Elves; and Pug's surviving son, Magnus—must marshal their resources against the latest threat.

Okay, let's take it from the top:

-If your name is "Pug", I guess you pretty much have to become a sorcerer. No way around it. Never going to be taken seriously otherwise. Coach Pug ain't gonna cut it. Judge Pug? That's almost a pun. It's Black Sorcerer or nothing.

-On the other hand, if your name is "Jim Dasher", you can do virtually anything and it will sound cool: "Jim Dasher, attorney at law," "Jim Dasher's New and Used Auto," "Jim Dasher, Fastest Barber on the West Side!" Pretty much an all-purpose moniker. Pug is probably a little jealous. Hell, I am too.

-Knight-Adamant Sandreena and "her former lover the necromancer Amirantha", huh? They sound like a cute couple. Wonder why they split? Not enough in common maybe. The necromancy and the adamancy, very little overlap there. Plus, who has time for a relationship with all of this Darkwarring and Demonwarring going on? Probably they're both just busy with work.

-Two renegade Star Elves apparently do not warrant names. Know why? Because no matter what their names are, they can't compare with Jim Dasher. The wise elf knows to bow out when so clearly outmatched.

-Pug has a surviving son, which I guess means one or more non-surviving sons perished in one of these wars or another. Being a Black Sorcerer must attract some serious tail, because let's face it, when your name is Pug, it's an uphill trek.

At the gates of darkness, where shadows hide even deeper shadows, these magical defenders will face what is sure to be the bloodiest, nastiest fight their land has ever seen.

Well how is the land going to see anything with all of those shadow-hiding shadows in the way?

And as evil, mayhem, and dark magic are unleashed, none can predict if they—and Midkemia itself—will survive.

No one can predict, really? I'll just lay out the odds now:

-Magnus is clearly boned, but Pug is probably covered for sequel purposes.

-One of the two Star Elves is gonna eat it, because let's face it, you pack a spare for a reason.

-One of the two love birds is on the way out. Probably the necromancer, because if it's the knight chick then the necro guy is going to be left with an awkward decision that we should all probably never think about.

-And Jim Dasher, of course, is probably home already, sipping fine cognac while the rest of these losers are stumbling around in the shadow-hiding shadows.

Yep, looks like everything is pretty much in order there.

What's that? You're wondering if I actually read the book? Well, honestly, I think I'm having more fun just doing this.

Dime store of doom!

For years I've trained myself to expect the unexpected, inherently fallacious nature of that concept be damned! But no matter how hard I work at it, there are some things you're just never ready for.

A few hours ago I wandered into one of those faceless bargain discount stores that from the outside sort of look like Willy Wonka is subletting the place for storag. What I encountered beyond those doors was a challenge to my sanity, indeed, to the very notion of sanity.

I found myself in a space that simply should not be, at least, not according to the agreed-upon rules of the natural world as we understand them. It was like an Escher painting, it seemed to just go on and on forever. I mean this place was deep, the aisles go back so far that I suspect if I hadn't turned around I'd presently be brunching in Narnia.

There's so much merchandise that each aisle is only two thirds of a customer wide. The further in you go, the more and more narrow the aisle gets, and yet somehow you never seem to have any less space to move in. Try to understand, it's unquestionably and verifiably narrower at one end than the other, there's no tool or sense you possess that would tell you otherwise.

But somehow the logical ramifications of that conclusion, ie that you should have less space to stand and walk in, never manifest themselves. You are equally as cramped at the wide end as the narrow. I can only conclude that the aisle does not crowd you any more than it already does in spite of the reduced dimensions simply because that is not possible.

There's no place at which you can cross from one aisle to the others, so if you want to browse another area of the store or if you reach a dead-end (I'm trusting to blind faith that there are finite boundaries in this building and that the aisles don't just stretch on forever into the mysterious aether) then the only thing to do is to turn around and go all the way back to the front.

So once you've chosen your path, you are pretty well and fully committed to it. God help you if you're trying to retrace your steps while other poor doomed souls are trying to push ahead, because in all likelihood you'll all be jammed up Zax-style, each of you an immovable obstacle in the other's path.

The deeper you are in this place, the more the shelves lean in at the top. At the five yard mark the angles are so extreme that I don't think they can be measured by our puny human mathematics. The merchandise occupying the upper levels of these perilous slopes clings to each surface through some eldritch means of which I won't even speculate, the result being that a parade of plastic fans, TV trays, and bobble head dolls leer down at you like gruesome gargoyles the whole time.

And I haven't even yet mentioned the stuff they sell here. The farther back you go, the tackier it is. This is what the inside of John Waters' mind must look like, a jumbled array of the most ludicrously tragic consumer goods ever spawned, stillborn, from factories in the Far East staffed by vacant-eyed zombies who must think that this country is some sort of Valhalla of bad taste if this is the crap we're importing.

The things I saw, oh, the things I saw. Anamatronic dancing Santas, portable lava lamps, inflatable plastic Jesus on an inflatable plastic cross, digital LED calendars bearing the image of a psychedelic Virgin Mary, snow globes with western motifs, Rubbermaid tableware, Tiffany lamps with religious iconography, shadowlanterns covered in dolphins, knockoffs of knockoffs of factory rejects of brand-name toys, glow-in-the-dark dartboards, Santeria dashboard icons, irregularly sized clothes hermetically sealed in plastic, food with labels in languages I don't even recognize, music boxes where tiny dogs dance with tiny mice (how does that even make sense?!).

It's a mad carnival of consumer society's outcasts and rejects, products of fevered minds that could fall only into unsuspecting hands. Not to mention all of the blinding flashing light-up shit. Let me ask, is it possible to catch epilepsy, is that something that can happen?

I tried to take some pictures of the place but most of them didn't turn out as anything but a barely-recognizable blur of shapes and colors, like what the world probably looks like to a four month old. I did get one mostly clear shot, although it's taken from near the front so the full brunt of the horrors aren't visible. Even so, I wouldn't recommend staring directly at it without some sort of protective eyewear. You've been warned:

This has certainly been a sobering lesson on the wisdom of respecting our own inherent limitations. Though the furthest and most desolate lands have been mapped, the deepest crevices of the ocean plumbed, and even the dark void of space holds increasingly few secrets, there are still some places where, definitively, Man Must Not Tread.

For all that though, I'm tempted to go back and explore further, but I half-expect that if I do I'll find that storefront vacant and shuttered with the neighbors insisting "There ain't been nothin' there for years now!" It's like the evil carnival in that Ray Bradbury book, it blows into town with the autumn wind and then vanishes utterly in the midst of a foggy night, taking with it those foolhardy souls who never did reach the front door again.

The Terry Moore Drinking Game!

In case you, like me, are still catching up on Eisner Award winners from fifteen years ago, here's something to help you through the pricklier points of indie comics fare that was considered cutting edge in the mid-90s but now reads like, well, something that was considered cutting edge in the mid-90s.

The rules are simple: Whenever you come across an example of any of the following in an issue of "Strangers in Paradise", you take a drink. And boy will you ever want a drink.

Ready? Reach for the bottle whenever:

-Someone cries.

-Someone yells.

-Someone yells, cries, then breaks something.

-A phone conversation ends with yelling.
+1 if the conversation was nothing but yelling.
+2 if the conversation was nothing but yelling at an answering machine.

-Someone gets hit.
+1 if that someone is David.
+2 if you don't care.
+3 if it's not David and it involves a broken nose (caring is optional).

-Someone leaves town.
+1 for each additional person who goes after them.

-Someone is hospitalized.

-Someone gets drunk.
+1 if it's Katchoo.

-Someone gets arrested.
+1 if it's Katchoo. So, pretty much every time.

-A male side character propositions one of the leads.
+1 if he's bald.
+2 if he's overweight.
+3 if he gets assaulted.
+4 if he's bald AND overweight AND gets assaulted (pace yourself, this is only page five!).

-An alarm clock goes off (don't ask me why, but there are a lot of alarm clocks in this series. I mean, a lot).

-A serious personal problem which would be cause for pathos with one of the leads (alcoholism, eating disorder, sexual frustration, etc.) is instead played for laughs with a side character.

-There's a dream sequence.
+1 if the dream illustrates a character's troubled past and/or overwhelming mass of insecurities (ie, things that didn't need ANY further illustration).
+2 if the dreamer wakes up by sitting bolt upright and screaming.
+3 if the shocking cliffhanger ending turns out to have been a dream (this actually only happens once, but it pissed me off enough that it makes the list).

-There's a poem.
+1 if it's bad.
+2 if Terry Moore wrote it.

-There's a song.
+1 if Terry Moore cites the recording artist with an asterisked footnote.
+2 if you've never heard of the artist.

-There's an iceberg-sized chunk of text just dropped into the middle of an issue.

-There's a satirical jab at mainstream comics that already feels dated.

-The story unexpectedly transitions from screwball comedy to overblown melodrama.

-The story unexpectedly transitions overblown melodrama to absurd, conspiracy-laden mob story.

-The story unexpectedly transitions from melodrama and/or mob story back to screwball comedy.

-Someone becomes unduly obsessed with Francine.

-You can't shake the feeling that Darcy resembles Ursula from "The Little Mermaid".

-You notice that a character looks more or less Asian than they did in the previous panel.

-David makes a painfully trite declaration of his love.
+1 if it's raining.
+2 if he's left standing there looking like a tool.

-Katchoo does not get to finish her current painting/sketch because she gets into a fight with someone.
+1 if that someone is her model.

-Francine is humiliated.
+1 if it involves her weight.
+2 if it involves her boobs (hey, don't blame me, I didn't write the comic!).

-One of the three leads almost sleeps with one of the three leads, but it doesn't quite happen.

-You finish an issue in which not a single character was a likable, believable, three dimensional person except for the leads.
+1 if you find you don't even like them.

***

Fun fact: I developed this game by accident. Read the series and you very likely will too.

Update Friday.