On March 9, 1994, the universe finally collected the tab on the “Dirty Old Man” himself, Charles Bukowski, who checked out of this absurd mortal coil in San Pedro, California.  At 73, leukemia accomplished what decades of catastrophic whiskey consumption, violently cheap cigars, and the existential horror of the United States Postal Service could not.  He died having thoroughly dismantled the polite, cellophane-wrapped fiction of the American Dream, leaving behind a staggering mountain of visceral, beautifully unvarnished poetry that made the literary establishment collectively clutch its pearls.

The man spent the vast majority of his adult life operating aggressively on The Fringe.  He was a creature of the racetrack and the dive bar, a guy who effectively treated his own liver like a hostile combatant while typing out literature that bypassed the brain entirely and punched you squarely in the balls.  He was the patron saint of the spectacularly flawed, the chronically unemployable, and anyone who ever looked at a nine-to-five job and felt the urgent, biological need to vomit.

The most magnificent detail of his departure – the absolute chef’s kiss on a life lived with middle fingers permanently raised – is his gravestone.  It features the silhouette of a boxer and exactly two words: DON’T TRY.

Now, some saps, the ones who write poetry about dew drops and puppy dogs and other such horseshit, will interpret that as a resignation, a surrender to the inevitable crushing weight of existence.  And if you think this was some sort of slacker mandate or an endorsement of perpetual lethargy, you are entirely missing the point.  Those of us who’ve actually read the man, who’ve tasted the bile and beauty in his sprawling, messy oeuvre, know better.  This was certainly not an invitation to lie back and let the world roll over you.  It was the opposite of laziness, a middle finger to effort that pretends, to straining after immortality or Cadillacs or applause.  Don’t force it.  Don’t posture.  Don’t grind your teeth and squeeze out art likes it’s a dump you scheduled.  Wait.  Watch.  When the thing – the line, the image, the liver-kick truth – crawls close enough, you reach out and slap it down or pet it, depending.  But you don’t chase it down the street waving a net made of MFA workshops and ambition.  You do it because it’s there, aching to get out, not because you’re trying to be somebody.

He believed real art should feel effortless, gritty, unforced.  No pretentions.  No counterfeited depth.  Just the raw spill of whatever was rattling around in the skull after the bars closed.  And if didn’t come?  You waited.  You drank.  You typed anyway.  But you didn’t try.

And then came the funeral, a masterclass in cosmic irony.  You might expect a man who chronicled the chaotic, grease-stained realities of Post Office and Factotum to be sent off with a violently rowdy wake involving broken bottles and cannons (a la H.S.T).  Instead, his funeral was conducted by Buddhist monks.  Yes, a chorus of serene, chanting ascetics offered up a profoundly quiet, surreal contrast to a lifetime defined by spectacular, screaming chaos.  It is exactly the kind of wildly unpredictable punchline the old man would have loved.

He left behind a body of work that still smells like sweat and cigarette ash and the inside of a bus station at 2 a.m.  He wrote about losers, drunks, gamblers, the chronically unlucky – and in doing so, he made them mythic.  Not heroic, not redeemed, but seen.  He carved out a literary kingdom for the people who never get statues, only arrest records.

And maybe that’s why he still matters.  Because in a culture obsessed with polishing itself into oblivion, Bukowski remains a reminder that the truth is usually found in the stains, the cracks, the parts of life that don’t photograph well.

So raise a terribly cheap glass to Bukowski today.  He was a glorious, infuriating disaster of a man who accidently captured the rawest elements of the human condition while actively trying to ignore them.  And whatever you do today, just don’t try.

N.P.: “Hot Stuff” – Mythic Prophesy

“My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible.  I think we should all be as uneasy as possible, because that’s what the world is like.”  E.G.

The day has arrived once more, dear reader – February 22, that faintly shuddering hinge in the calendar – on which we commemorate the birth of Edward St. John Gorey, who in 1925 emerged (one imagines) from some drafty New England parlor already wearing a fur coat and already regarding the world with that particular expression suggesting both polite interest and terminal disappointment.

It is customary, on such occasions, to offer felicitations, though in Gorey’s universe such gestures tend to be met with a sort of wan, sidelong glance, as though the recipient were quietly calculating the statistical likelihood of a chandelier collapsing or a large, ill-tempered creature appearing at the door.  Nevertheless, one persists.

For Gorey – illustrator, writer, designer, and unrepentant purveyor of gothic whimsy – constructed an oeuvre in which calamity was not so much an interruption as a houseguest.  His pen-and-ink lines, so fine as to resemble the hairs of an anxious moth, arranged themselves into parlors, staircases, and desolate moors where children expired with alarming regularity, adults behaved with inscrutable malaise, and creatures of uncertain taxonomy lurked with impeccable manners.

The Peculiar Legacy of a Man Who Made Tragedy Charming

• The Gashlycrumb Tinies, that alphabet of diminutive doom, remains a sort of primer for the aesthetically morbid.
• The Doubtful Guest, who overstays its welcome by several decades, is perhaps the most accurate portrait of the human condition ever committed to paper.
• The Loathsome Couple, with its unnervingly calm depiction of monstrous behavior, demonstrates Gorey’s talent for presenting horror with the emotional temperature of a tepid cup of tea.

To celebrate Gorey is to celebrate the art of the omission.  In his world – a world of heavy urns, sprawling Edwardian manors, and questionable footwear – the most terrifying things are the ones left unsaid, or rather, the ones left just outside the frame of the pen-and-ink border.

• The Victorian Aesthetic: He rendered the nineteenth century not as it was, but as it should have been: populated by melancholy bearded men in floor-length fur coats and children who meet their demise with an almost admirable lack of protest.
• The Deadpan Disposition: There is a certain psychopathic indifference to his work that we, the gloom-inclined, find deeply comforting.  When little Amy tumbles down the stairs, there is no weeping; there is only the impeccable line-work of the banister.
• The Theatricality: Beyond the page, his Tony-winning designs for Dracula and the wobbling, fainting silhouettes of PBS’s Mystery! Introduction remind us that the gothic is not just a style, but a choreography.

Let us reflect on the essential Gorey-esque truths that govern our blog today:

• Objects are often more reliable than people.  Especially if the object is an inexplicable stone or an iron figuring.
• The weather is perpetually ominous.  If the sun is shining, it is merely doing so to highlight the precariousness of a nearby cliffside.
• Adverbs are to be used with surgical precision.  One does not simply walk; one wanders distractedly, or gazes reproachfully.

His work is not cruel; it is indifferent, which is far more unsettling.  The universe, in Gorey’s hands, is a place where dreadful things happen with the same inevitability as dust accumulating on a velvet curtain.  The effect is both chilling and oddly comforting, like discovering that the abyss has impeccable posture.

How to Gorey-fy Your Life (or Determine If You’re Already a Character in a Gorey Book)
Living in an Edward Gorey story is marked by a pervasive, whimsical macabre aesthetic, featuring Edwardian/Victorian fashion (furs, boots), inexplicable gloomy weather, and a sense of “wistful murder mysteries” or quiet, absurd, and often fatalistic happenings.  Expect to encounter strange creatures, sudden, matter-of-fact misfortunes, and a generally eerie, black-and-white, highly detailed world.

Key Signs You Are in a Gorey Narrative:

• The Setting is Uncannily Dreary: You live in a drafty Victorian house, a foggy, desolate seaside town, or a room furnished only with a single, bizarre object.
• Fashion is Strict and Somber: You wear long fur coats, dark tailored clothing, high collars, and perhaps small gold hoop earrings regardless of the weather or activity.
• Inexplicable Guests: A strange, silent creature or a “doubtful guest” has arrived and refuses to leave, occupying a corner or disrupting daily routines.
• A “Goreyesque” Atmosphere: Everyday, mundane activities are overshadowed by a dark, surreal, and quiet dread.
• Unusual Cat Behavior: Cats are omnipresent, sometimes acting as, or resembling, cryptic observers in your daily life.
• Accidents are Prevalent: Family members or neighbors constantly, yet calmly, succumb to absurd, tragic, or mysterious mishaps.
• Detailed, Monochromatic Existence: The world feels like a cross-hatched, ink-drawn illustration where even the most dire evens are depicted with meticulous, artistic precision.
• Unsettling Humor: You find yourself laughing at things that are undeniably creepy, absurd, or morbid.

If you feel your life is a mix of a quiet, elegant nightmare and a, frankly, somewhat confusing game of Clue, you are likely inhabiting an Edward Gorey world.

So on this day, we raise a glass – preferably something faintly dusty, in a room where the wallpaper seems to be watching – to Edward Gorey, who taught us that morbidity need not be grotesque, that elegance can coexist with calamity, and that the world is far more bearable when one accepts that doom, like a persistent houseguest, will eventually sit down and ask for tea.

N.P.: “The Passenger” – Emily Autumn

You know what today is, dear reader: The Big Day!  So let’s get to it.  Let us raise a glass – preferably something volatile, possibly hallucinogenic, and definitely poured from a copper decanter with unnecessary gauges – to the undisputed godfather of speculative badassery.  Today marks the 1828 genesis event in Nantes, France, of one Jules Goddammit Verne.  [Author’s note: his middle name wasn’t really Goddammit – it was Gabriel – profanity added for enthusiasm.]  And frankly, if you don’t think this man deserves a twenty-one-gun salute fired from the deck of a submarine that doesn’t exist yet, maybe you’re better off watching professional sport or some such.

Because this man essentially reverse‑engineered the future using nothing but ink, obsessive research, and a brain wired like a Victorian supercomputer running at unsafe voltages while everyone else was still trying to figure out how to keep their pantaloons from catching fire near a candle.

Verne was doing the heavy lifting before “science fiction” was eve a glint in a publisher’s eye.  He looked at the world – a world obsessed with steam engines and top hats – and said, “That’s cute, but what if we shot three guys out of a cannon and landed them on the moon?”  And he did it with such meticulous, neurotic research that you almost feel bad for the lesser mortals trying to write adventure stories today.  It’s the literary equivalent of building a functioning internal combustion engine out of paper clips and cider-driven hubris.

The man didn’t predict the future so much as he bullied it into existence.  Every submarine hatch that ever hissed open in the real world owes something to Captain Nemo’s brooding Nautilus, that gothic iron leviathan gliding through abyssal darkness like a floating cathedral of revenge.  Every rocket that punched through the atmosphere carries the echo of Verne’s lunar shell, that audacious brass-and-gunpowder dream.  He mapped the thrill of the unknown onto the grid of known fact, and made speculation feel like engineering homework.  Verne predicted the electric submarine at a time when electricity was basically just magic that killed you if you touched it wrong.  He saw the deep-sea exploration, the crushing pressure, the isolation – he saw it all through a haze of cigar smoke and French ennui.

Consider, sexy reader, From the Earth to the Moon.  The man basically calculated escape velocity on the back of a napkin while sipping absinthe.  He predicted the launch site (Florida, obviously) and the splashdown method.  It’s almost annoying how right he was.  It’s the kind of prescience that makes you wonder if he had a time machine stashed in his basement next to the wine rack.

Then there is Around the World in Eighty Days.  Phileas Fogg is the patron saint of punctuality and anxiety.  The idea of global connectivity, of shrinking the world until it fits in your pocket watch – Verne saw the internet coming.  He didn’t call it that, of course.  He called it steamships and railways and pure bloody-minded determination, but the spirit is the same.  He understood that the world was getting smaller, faster, and infinitely more dangerous.

So here’s to Jules Verne, the man who taught us that exploration is 10% science, 40% madness, and 50% just refusing to admit that going to the center of the Earth is a terrible idea.  He is the reason we look at the stars and think, “Hell, I bet I could build a ship and go up there,” instead of just, “Pretty lights.”

Now go build something impossible. Or at least read something that makes you feel like you could.

N.P.: “The King’s Court” – Kristofer Maddigan

Hot damn, dear reader…today we raise a whole goddamn bottle to Norman Kingsley Mailer, the literary titan who swaggered into the world on this day in 1923 (the same year my father was born) and spent the next 84 years punching, writing, and philosophizing his way into the annals of American letters. There are certain figures in the literary cosmos – cosmos here meaning that sprawling, barely governable constellation of egos, neuroses, and typewriter shrapnel – whose birthdays feel less like commemorations and more like controlled detonations.  Mailer was a force of nature, a human hurricane of ego, intellect, and testosterone who made it his business to provoke, challenge, and occasionally terrify anyone who dared stand in his way.

Mailer was an absolute badass.  Not the Instagram-filtered, hashtagged kind, but the real fucking deal – the kind who wrote like his typewriter was on fire and lived like he had a personal vendetta against boredom.  This is the man who gave us The Naked and the Dead, a WWII novel so raw it smells like gunpowder and sweat.  He followed that up with The Executioner’s Song, a Pulitzer-winning masterpiece that turned the grim, true-crime story of Gary Gilmore into a sprawling, novelistic epic.

Mailer dissected the human condition with the precision of a surgeon and the brutality of a barroom brawler.

Mailer wasn’t just about the words.  He was a walking, talking, headline-generating spectacle.  He ran for the mayor of New York City (on a platform that included seceding the city from the state), headbutted his way through literary feuds, and once famously decked a critic at a  party.  He was the kind of guy who could charm you with a perfectly turned phrase one minute and make you want to throw a drink in his face the next.

Mailer’s genius (and his madness) lay in his refusal to play it safe.  He bulldozed boundaries, set them on fire, and then wrote a 10,000-word essay about the ashes.  He was a pioneer of New Journalism, blending fact and fiction in a way that made journalistic purists clutch their pearls and readers care more deeply about the stories.  He was a messy, complicated, infuriating pain in the ass, but he was never boring.

So here’s to the man who turned literature into a compact sport, who made us think, argue, and occasionally cringe, and who reminded us that great writing isn’t about being polite – it’s about being alive.

Happy birthday, Mr. Mailer

N.P.: “Smack My Bitch Up” – Aytkact

Welp, here we are again, dear reader, another Tuesday spinning around the sun on this mud-ball of consequence and cheap wine, and the calendar, that merciless tick-tocking ledger of our own slow decay, informs us that it is January 27th.  A day that would, if I were in charge of things, be a global holiday of mandatory, state-sponsored debauchery.  Why? Because on this day, back in 1756, the heavens smiled (maybe smirked) down at humanity, and out popped – fully formed, one assumes, with a tiny powdered wig and a head full of symphonies that would make angels weep into their celestial cognacs – one Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart.  [Preemptive response to any snarky freshman insisting Mozart’s middle name was Amadeus…you’re not wrong: it’s in there.  “Theophilus” translates to “lover of God” or “beloved of God,” which he often rendered as “Amadeus” in Latin.  Now quit whining and pay attention.]

Wolfie.  The Kid from Salzburg, that smug little Archbishopric town, a baroque snow-globe of a city that probably didn’t deserve the cosmic anomaly it was hosting.  This was the starting block of a thirty-five-year rampage of such concentrated, supernova-grade talent that it still scorches the ears and baffles the mind.  Almost instantly beyond merely composing music, he mainlined the divine, scribbling down dispatches from a dimension the rest of us can only glimpse in our most profound moments of chemical or emotional excess.  He committed a kind of ecstatic arson on the very idea of what music was supposed to be, torching the rulebook while humming counterpoint so perfect it bishops shit and aristocrats rethink their live choices.  Dude was basically a human high-pressure hose of melody, spraying the 18th century with a recursive, self-referential brilliance that, frankly, most dear readers are too intellectually malnourished to even process.  He spat out concertos like sunflower seeds.  He tossed off operas that contained more human truth in a single aria than most novels manage in 400 pages of tortured prose.  All this while navigating the powdered, perfumed, and profoundly perilous viper pit of Viennese court society.  It’s been 270 years of the little bastards ghost still owning the room, still making every  subsequent composer sound like they’re trying to hot-wire a harpsichord in the back of a stolen carriage while Mozart’s already three towns ahead, laughing in perfect sonata form.  You listen to the Jupiter Symphony or the Requiem and you realize the rest of us are just dicking around with tuning forks while he was out there rewriting the laws of emotional physics.

And then, the flameout.  The big, ugly stop.  Thirty-five.  An age when most of us are just starting to figure out how to properly file our taxes, Mozart was already a legend being shoveled into a pauper’s grave.  The official story is as thin as cheap soup, some horseshit about a fever.  But we know better, don’t we, dear reader?  The darkness that always nibbled at the edges of his brightest compositions finally came to collect.

Was it Salieri, the patron saint of mediocrity, finally succumbing to a fit of murderous envy?  A plausible, almost operatic, narrative.  Or was it something more sordid, more human?  A bad plate of pork, a dose of trichinosis turning his guts into a warzone?  A grimly ironic end for a man who lived his life at forte fortissimo. Or maybe it was mercury, the fashionable cure-all of the day, a slow-acting poison administered by a jealous husband or a quack doctor.  Regardless, we know it was no grand operatic exit, no dramatic farewell aria – just a genius reduced to a shivering, swollen husk in a rented room while the city outside kept right on waltzing without him.

But here we are, centuries later, still blasting his stuff in concert halls and headphones and car stereos at 3 a.m. when the world feels too stupid to live in.  The music doesn’t age, doesn’t date, doesn’t give a flying fuck about your theories or your playlists or your fragile ego; it just sits there, eternal and smug, daring you to keep up.

So today, raise a toast to the Wolf…not of some polite Riesling, but of something with a kick: whiskey, cheap red, black coffee laced with spite.  Happy birthday, Wolfie.  He burned twice as bright, and if he only lasted half as long, well, maybe that was the point.  He crammed a hundred lifetimes of pure, uncut genius into three and a half decades, leaving behind a body of work so perfect, so impossible, that it serves as a permanent middle finger to the quiet desperation of an ordinary life.  (And if you’re reading this while some string quartet is sawing through Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in the background, crank it louder.  Let the uncultured heathens next door know the dead genius is still winning).

N.P.: “Mozart” – Trans Siberian Orchestra