Bitter Pill

Posted on September 13, 2008 by ubu507

 

I’m not a songwriter BUT yesterday while I was walking to work this little ditty started running through my head called "Bitter Pill." It was a sort of Elvis Costello country ballad type thing and I worked out about three verses. I had to go to the library sale though so I only scrawled down my favorite part, and the rest is lost to history, you know, like what happened to "Kubla Khan" when that guy knocked on Coleridge’s door to ask for directions. But in this case it’s probably for the best — I thought it was a pretty original idea, but in googling "bitter pill lyrics" I discovered that such musical giants as Dashboard Confessional, Warrant, Billy Idol and even Motley Crue had come up with songs of the same title. Great minds think alike I guess. At any rate for what it’s worth here’s my fragment:

 

There are pills of every color

Red and blue and green

They got circles and squares

And every shape in between

I eat ‘em by the handful

They never hurt me never will

Because I’ve already swallowed

Life’s most bitter pill

 

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From the Quote Bag: Negotium Perambulans

Posted on September 12, 2008 by ubu507

 

I guess I’ll just empty out the old quote bag again, starting with some bits of Cults That Kill that I missed when rolling my last little number:

 

Upper torso, below base of neck, "Satan" printed w/orange lipstick. Middle of torso (chest), "I’M COME HOME MASTER" [sic] printed with ballpoint pen. Middle lung area, the numbers "666" printed with orange lipstick. Left ribcage area, "SATAN" printed with orange lipstick. Front of right leg and ankle, "I love Satan" w/ballpoint pen. Buttock area, vertical line and, crosswise across top of buttocks, a horizontal line at the bottom of the vertical line. These lines have the appearance of an upside down cross when viewed from top to bottom; this was done w/pink lipstick. Inside of left thigh, "LUCIFER," printed w/orange lipstick.

I remember one kid we picked up for dope had a big inverted cross on the back of his jacket. Above that he had an inverted pentagram, and below the cross he had "666." Not only that, but he had calling cards with all these symbols on it and the type of sex he would perform. It just blew my mind.

THIS DEPARTMENT IS CURRENTLY CONDUCTING INVESTIGATIONS INTO SATANIC CULTS WHICH MAY BE INVOLVED IN ANIMAL MUTILATIONS AND RITUALISTIC HOMICIDES OF HUMAN BEINGS, WHEREIN INTERNAL ORGANS ARE REMOVED FROM THE VICTIMS AND USED IN CHURCH BAPTISMS AND RITUALS.

More importantly, they confirmed for themselves something many of them still didn’t believe or want to believe. Bizarre crimes, related to ancient occult teachings, actually were taking place in the twentieth century.

– Larry Kahaner

 

For every time he seemed to have gone farther along a path of secret knowledge toward some evil shrine where complete initiation awaited him.

– E. F. Benson

 

He seeks to cure the malady of the soul through the medium of his senses with hallucinogenic results.

There is a strange penumbral landscape where truths can exist and not exist, where they can be at once buried in the shadow lands of the mind, and yet illuminated by the light of rationality.

– Neil McKenna

 

What’s bothering her is the fact that she has a better rapport with a goofy teenager than with any of her peers. Actually, she is more bothered by the fact that she thinks her peers are a bunch of insufferable jerks.

– Theresa Schwegel

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Crime Beat: The Ypsilanti Welcome Wagon

Posted on September 10, 2008 by ubu507

 

A man who showed up at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital with a gunshot wound to the shoulder said he was injured early Sunday when someone at a large party yelled, "Welcome to Ypsilanti," and fired a gun.

 

 

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2008 Kerrytown BookFest

Posted on September 9, 2008 by ubu507

 

Well, we did it again, but there was no oops about it, just a lot of hard work by a lot of people. When I woke up on Sunday at 6:30 and heard the rain, I got an instant headache. The Kerrytown BookFest is a mighty, mighty creature, but like the wicked witch it has one weakness – water. Even though we have tents and roofed vendor areas a little liquid sunshine is pretty much of a deal breaker for attendance. Various people placated the gods in their own fashion (let me tell you, it’s hard to find a virgin in Ann Arbor to sacrifice at that hour) and lo and behold at about 10:30 the skies cleared and once I saw the sun I knew everything was going to be copasetic.

Attendance was up, the author panels and demonstrations were jammed, the vendors were making money and just about everyone was walking around with a smile, digging the groovy booklovin’ vibe. I guess it really is the Ann Arbor News’s loss if they treat the fab Fest like a red headed stepchild. They had a little article the week before and an anemic photo essay on Monday, but tell me the pictures by our official photographer GREGORY D. ANTHONY won’t be a jillion times better. The front page cultural event of Sunday? The bike race which was said to have "several hundred" spectators. Even if that were true – there were maybe twenty when I saw the start while on a coffee run (as well as the WORST mangling of our national anthem since Roseanne Barr) – it seems to me that an event that had almost FIVE THOUSAND attendees might merit a tad more ink. The other Ann Arbor Book Festival got a week of gushing build up raves from the Ann Arbor News before their event as well as a glowing front page postmortem with fantastic attendance figures, but all I know is that they are going to seriously downsize next year while we are expanding, with bigger tents, more exhibitors and more books.

There were so many good moments and so much help from good friends that I can’t name them all. I’m usually not a big fan of the Boy Scouts, but I have to tell you that I saw them in a different light while they were so assiduously and efficiently helping us set up (and most importantly) tear down. Tearing down is like sprinting uphill at the end of a marathon, and the first few scouts I saw at five p.m. were tiny lads, but I breathed a sigh of relief when their brawnier cohorts showed up. Hail to thee SCOUTS and SCOUT MASTERS! Even though I’m older, I’m only half as sore as I was at this time last year.

Authors are at worst interesting people, and at best as personable as the ones who were on the book panels at the Fest. Although I really enjoyed every writer I talked to, I admit having a bit of a crush on the Noir Ladies, MEGAN ABBOTT and THERESA SCHWEGEL. I guess I just have a thing for beautiful women who are incredibly cool, intelligent and write brilliantly wonderful books. Weird, huh?

The only downside is wondering how we are going to top the 2008 Kerrytown BookFest, but knowing the board that so brilliantly guides its destiny, I can only say that only a chump will miss 2009’s edition.

 

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Woody, Woody

Posted on September 6, 2008 by ubu507

 

When I was back there at Kenyon College the most famous student poet of the day was a guy named Wade “Woody” Newman . To hear the teachers and tastemakers talk you’d think he was poised to take up the Kenyon poet baton from Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell, there at the resting place of John Crowe Ransom. Woody was a nice, pleasant chap and all, but I never thought there was that much actual substance to his poetry, even his sonnet cycle on the life of Christ. Subsequently he hasn’t made that much noise on the literary scene, but in our debased world what poet does? He was a good buddy of my late friend Greg Shell and wrote a pretty good letter that was read at the funeral detailing an incredible prophetic dream he had right before Greg’s death. I usually have dreams like that after someone I’m close to dies, but I haven’t, and have had to console myself with the weird appearance on the roof of the car that I drove to Greg’s funeral of a very large preying mantis with an attitude that reminded me of Greg’s. Although his day job is as a corporate headhunter (and god knows what we would have made of THAT in college) Woody’s still rhyming away, and the whole thing inspired me to pick up a book of Woody’s called Poisoned Apples from Pivot Press of Brooklyn, New York. This following couplet caught my eye at once and I got to tell you, Woody, I salute you but this has to go under the category of TOO MUCH INFORMATION:

 

These are the nipples that shrink from my tongue,

This is the orgasm that will not come.

 

 

 

 

 

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Crime Beat: Animal Headlines

Posted on September 5, 2008 by ubu507
 
Here are the CRIME BEAT headlines of the month, both of them sadly involving worse for wear critters:
 

 

Troopers with Taser forced to kill emu on turnpike

 

Teen who sodomized dead cat gets 9 months

 

 

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Cults That Kill

Posted on September 3, 2008 by ubu507

 

The following is from Cults That Kill: Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime by Larry Kahaner, a pure product of the great Occult scare of the 80’s. Once again the material has been arranged, edited and personally UBU selected for your reading pleasure:

 

SYNOPSIS: This report concerns listed individuals performing religious ceremonies in a secluded area while wearing white robes.

The information contained herein is distasteful and bizarre, to such a degree that one would choose to discredit it. However, research that I have done in this area has revealed that numerous cases of this type are surfacing around the country and in Canada.

Also during the investigation, officers have learned that students in three school districts in the county of Monroe practice the worshiping of Satan.

To have that kind of activity going on in our county and us not know about it, that scares me.

It blew my mind; right here in the city – devil worshipers. My partner an I have been looking into it, but we’ve been keeping a low profile. We’ve continued talking to the kids. It’s unbelievable the stuff they’re into.

Followers are held in the group by drugs, mind control, intimidation, and the cult of confession. During their criminal acts, terms or unusual sayings are left with symbols which to them have meaning.

Repeated physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual assaults combined with a systematic use of symbols, ceremonies, and machinations designed and orchestrated to attain malevolent effects.

Here’s a kid who’s a loner, not doing great in school, into drugs and so on.

Loner, above average IQ, underachiever, strives for control or power, takes drugs, preoccupation with death, pornographic material, secretive.

Another indication is books. People who have a lot of books are serious. It takes a lot of effort to study books.

The point we’re at now is trying to sift through all the information and verify it. The problem we have is that a lot of the information we get is from people who are in mental institutions.

If this incident changed me in any way it changed me to feel that there are a lot of things going on out there that we have absolutely no idea about.

 

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Into the Fog With the POD People

Posted on September 2, 2008 by ubu507

 

It’s P.O.D. (Print On Demand) time again, celebrating the titles from those so special teeny tiny publishers and self-publishers who fly in the face of commercial fiction to make us ask the big questions – like HUH? WHAT THE HECK?

 

 

Love Runes

Jay Lygon

Sam, the god of sex, and Hector, the god of love, have a unique relationship. They’re into the BDSM lifestyle, and they both have some serious issues. Hector has no intention of losing Sam to Marcus, the god of fear, or the Goddess of Eternal Youth, but can he get to Sam in time? 248 pp. (Fiction/Erotica/Gay) Torquere Press: Imprints include Turn of the Screw and High Balls.

 

The Stickup Kid

Levent Gulari

In The Stickup Kid, the coin stands on its edge on the fog machine that clouds the dragon’s long winding trail from Asia in this message that the meek shall inherit the loot. 180 pp. (Fiction/General) Llumina Press: Self-Publishing, Editing, Printing and More.

 

Earth Prayers Angels and Dreams

Athena Alexa

Alexa’s poetry reflects her belief that the destiny of time embraces peace. 112 pp. (Poetry/American/General) Outskirts Press: The Gem of Custom Book Publishing.

 

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Ember Days

Posted on August 30, 2008 by ubu507

 

This poem was inspired by Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the 16th and 17th Centuries by Carlo Ginzburg

 

 

Ember Days

 

There are women

Who during the Ember Days

Go out of their senses travel

On strange nocturnal journeys

Compelled to wander until

Their allotted time has elapsed

 

They congregate on Thursdays

Dreaming abandoning their bodies

Their spirits fly over the woods

In nocturnal cavalcades

The wild hunt shrieking

Through fields of pastured animals

To the briar patches of Mount Venus

The meadow of the Madonna

The circle in the swamp

Under the legendary walnut tree

 

There

They worship the Mistress of the Game

A certain woman called the Abbess

The Sorceress The Charmer seated

In majesty on the edge of the well

Filled with water reflecting

A multi formed female deity

Arboreal and vegetal goddess

Abundia Satia Diana Perchta

 

After they have knelt

The witches play other games

In this or that

Perhaps very distant place

Meeting their companions in

A riot of banquets and dances

Feasting and philandering

Indulging in leaping orgies to

Ensure the fertility of the fields

 

Come with me and

The witches to the dance

Come in spirit to the parade

Come and join the nuptials

Where we will eat sweets

Sport dishonestly dance

Feast love dissipating

In the center of the world

 

Hearing all the music

That can possibly be heard

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The Unspotted Mirror Of Transcendence

Posted on August 29, 2008 by ubu507

 

Here’s another ancient bit of Wisdom (Sophia) literature UBUized for your protection:

 

Where I prayed, and understanding was given me:

I called and the spirit of Wisdom came unto me.

I preferred her before scepters and thrones, and

Esteemed riches nothing in comparison with her.

 

Neither did I compare her to any precious stone,

Because all gold is but a grain of sand compared to her,

And silver counted as clay.

 

I loved her above health and beauty,

And chose to have her instead of light,

For the light that emanates from her

Cannot be extinguished.

 

Now all good things came to me together with her,

And innumerable riches through her hands.

And I rejoiced in them all,

Because Wisdom went before me,

And she is the Mother of them all.

 

This I have learned without guile,

And communicate without envy.

I do not hide her riches for

She is a treasure without end!

 

And all such things that are hidden or manifest, them

I know, for Wisdom, the worker of all things, taught me.

Hers is the spirit of understanding: holy, unique, manifold,

Subtle, eloquent, lively, clear, undefiled, sure, sweet,

Loving that which is good, quick, unstoppable, beneficent,

Gentle, kind, steadfast, assured, secure, intelligible and pure,

Overseeing all things and containing all spirits.

 

For Wisdom is more moving than any motion:

She passeth and goeth through all things

By reason of her purity.

 

For she is the brightness of eternal light

And the unspotted mirror of transcendence,

The image of goodness.

 

For she is more beautiful than the sun,

Above all the order of the stars,

And when compared to the light,

She will be found greater.

For after day cometh night, but

No darkness can overcome Wisdom.

 

— Wisdom of Solomon

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