Today, on this cold, likely dreary day (depending on where you’re reading this), we commemorate the birth of  Edgar Allan Poe! Yes, the master of mystery and the macabre, the sultan of suspense, the ayatollah of rock-and-rolla, the king of…well, you get the idea.

Born on this day, January 19,  1809, Poe has left an indelible mark on the world of literature. From “The Tell-Tale Heart” to “The Raven”, his stories and poems have given us the terrors, made us think and become slightly paranoid, and have  inspired more than a few beautiful nightmares.

Now, you might be wondering, how does one properly celebrate the birthday of such a literary legend?  You could start by reading one of his works by candlelight, preferably during a thunderstorm for maximum effect. If reciting “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore'” to your unimpressed black cat isn’t quite your style, you could always do what the author himself would have done, and get toweringly drunk.  Drink whiskey in a candle-lit room, horribly alone, writing.  Fuck yes.

I do miss the Poe Toaster.  That was the sort of thing that used to make being a writer cool…the idea that strange people would visit your grave in tribute, 100 years after you died.  Alas.  Pour some out for the Toaster.

Anyway, happy 215th birthday, Edgar Allan Poe!

N.P.: “The Conqueror Worm” – Lou Reed

Welp, it’s Monday, and to be totally honest with you, dear reader, I haven’t been less excited about a Monday in a very long time.  The days are have begun their annual increase, the sky is the color of a tainted meringue, and somehow this day even smells funky.  Not sure what’s up, but we’re simply going to crack on, to hell with this new year’s stank.  First, perhaps some fine haiku:

No resolutions.
Just great writing and revenge.
Pens, swords, and shotguns.

Fuck yes…that felt great.  I need to do that more often.  It reminded me that I do write a mean haiku (usually while imbibing sake bombs at Beni Hana), and that I’ve amassed an admirable collection over the years.  I’ve been thinking about adding a haiku section to the site.  Different from “Doggerel,” though still just as terrible, even more so, since it’s just hacking away at what should be a beautiful, refined Japanese artform.

---

Anyway, how about some bad jokes?  I got you.  My favorite childhood memory was building sandcastles with my grandpa.  Until my mother took his ashes away.
What do you call a horny cow?  Beef jerky.  (I told you they’d be bad.)  What are the lion and the witch doing in my wardrobe?  It’s Narnia business.

I hate my job.  All I do is crush cans.  It’s soda-pressing.

Think that was bad?  I can do worse.

I saw a hot non-binary person the other day…I said, “Let me she/them titties!”

Get it?  Fine, I’ll stop.

Okay, one more.  I recently hired two Vietnamese sisters to help me with my production.  It was a Nguyen-Nguyen situation.

N.P.: “Ghost” – Slash, Ian Astbury

Happy New Years, vigorous reader.  Know that I am drinking whiskey toasts to you and yours.  Unless you’re one of the Three On The List, in which case I am, as always, wishing you ill and encourage you, for the sake of all concerned, to run far and fast if you haven’t already.  But fuck them…this is about you, dear reader…I do hope you have a happy new year.  My advice for 2024: Pay off any and all debts, procure more long guns and ammo, have cash on hand, invest in body armor, do not travel, and be ready to move fast.

But I’m sure everything’s going to be fine.

N.P.: “Nemesis” – Shriekback

JG:  ….mmmhello?

Mgmt: Good morning!  And happy New Year’s Eve!

JG:  Shit…is it?

Mgmt:  Yes, it is New Year’s Eve, and we’re still waiting for your end-of-the-year message.  Have you even started it yet.

JG: Yes, of course…I started that weeks ago.

Mgmt: When will it be done?

JG: It’s ready to go…but no one’s going to want to read it.

Mgmt: What do you mean?

JG: It will drive people crazy.  Literally make people insane.

Mgmt: And why is that?

JG: It’s way too dark for the American snowflakes to handle.

Mgmt: You’re always dark.

JG: No…not like this.  This shit is absolutely apocalyptic.  It will drive people mad.  And I don’t want to do that.  I just want to make people laugh.  How about I just tell some jokes?

Mgmt: Because your jokes are bad and usually completely offensive.

JG: Oh shut up.  You wouldn’t know a good joke if it fell out of the sky, landed on your face, and started to wiggle.

Mgmt: We focused group your last set of jokes, and…

JG: Fuck your focus group.

Mgmt: …several members quit, and one reported suicidal ideation and wanted “trauma compensation” by the time the group was done.

JG: Because they’ve been brainswashed by you woke fuckers, and when they find themselves laughing at something they’ve been indoctrinated not to laugh at, they fall apart.

Mgmt: What’s the general gyst of your New Years message…can you at least tell us that?

JG: I didn’t know what to wear to my Premature Ejaculation Society meeting.

Mgmt: Huh?

JG: So I just came in my pants.

Mgmt: Jesus.

JG: Sometimes I have sex with my uncle in an elevator.

Mgmt: For the love of God.

JG: And it’s wrong on so many levels.

Mgmt: Okay, that’s what we’re talking about…that’s not funny.

JG: My girlfriend dumped me, so I stole her wheelchair.

Mgmt: You are the worst client we’ve ever had.

JG: Guess who came crawling back.

Mgmt: ….

JG: Today I saw a midget climbing down a prison wall.

Mgmt: I personally hate you.

JG: And I thought to myself, “That’s a little con-descending.”

Mgmt: Just send us the new year’s thing.

JG: What do you call a hippie’s wife?

Mgmt: ….

JG: Mrs. Hippie.  Mississippi.  Get it?

Mgmt: So, New Years message…what’s it going to be?  Just give us a hint.

JG: Well, there’s a bunch of categorical bitching about this year and the several prior to it, which bitching goes on for quite a number of pages.

Mgmt: Maybe you could trim down the page count and send those to us.

JG: I could, and I will, but that will have to be in the new year…no way I can do that today.

Mgmt: Okay.  What comes after the bitching?

JG: A litany of truly dire predictions for the coming year.  Dire!  They’re all bad.

Mgmt: It can’t be all bad.  Surely there must be at least one positive thing, one glimmer of hope.  That’s what people need right now…some kind of optimism or hope.

JG: There’s not a lot of sunshine and puppy dogs from where I’m sitting.  Hey, why is it called PMS?

Mgmt: We really need one positive thing from you for New Years.

JG: Cuz Mad Cow Disease was taken.

Mgmt: Please, for the love of God, focus.  What is one hope you have for the new year?  And please, no more jokes.

JG: Okay, fine.  The only hope I have for the coming year is that…hello?  Hello?  Shit…phone died.  Maybe they’ll call back.

N.P.: “It’s Coming It’s Real” – Swans

Merry Christmas, beloved reader.

N.P.: “The Twelve Days of Christmas” – Gary Hoey

Merry Christmas, dear reader!  I love Christmas as much as the next blackguard, but I don’t feel the need to decorate the outside of the house every Christmas.  It, quite simply, seems like a huge pain in the ass.  And for what?  The neighbors’ and other weirdos amusement?  I don’t particularly care for either weirdos or neighbors, so I don’t see the point.  Apparently, many of my neighbors feel differently.  This year, in particular, many of them have gone absolutely apeshit with their outdoor Christmas décor and lights.  When I say “apeshit,” I mean unironically using Clark Griswold as their inspiration and mentor.  Most of these projects have actual budgets…serious money is being spent on this garishness. My issues with this seasonal silliness are myriad, but I’ll just give you the top three:

1.  These are the lowlands of California, which is to say there is no such thing as a white Christmas.  It doesn’t snow here.  I’m old enough to remember the last time it did “snow” in this valley, and that was in 1976.  Since then, not a flake.  Because our governor is an incompetent ass who doesn’t understand even the most basic concepts of deforestation or successfully managing water resources, California is in a state of perpetual drought, regardless of how much rain falls in a given year, most people’s front yards look like the Arizona desert during Christmastime:
   dead lawn and patches of dirt.  Which makes oversized inflatable snowmen look absurdly out of place.  Traditional “winter” Christmas décor where there is no snow comes off as desperate and rather pathetic.
2. These overdecorated and hyperlit houses draw all manner of bridge and tunnel trash into the neighborhood.  There are, of course, no bridges or tunnels here, but you know what I mean: other desert-dwellers in desperate attempts to have something like a white Christmas but don’t have a budget set aside for a professionally designed lightshow drive around looking for other people’s ostentatious displays, which leads a lot of them to my street.  And they don’t do quick drive-bys… no, they drive slower than a parade and oftentimes completely stop and just park it in front of their favorite festooned houses.  This causes actual traffic at inordinate times on an otherwise quiet street.  This, in turn, causes dark states of piss off and anger amongst the various UPS, Amazon, and DoorDash drivers trying to make their way to my door.  “Fuck it, bro…you’re on your own…I’m 750 feet from your house and I haven’t moved for 20 minutes…you’re going to need to pick this shit up yourself,” is a common theme of messages sent to me from delivery drivers these past two weeks.  Then when I do leave the house after dark, I end up ruining multiple Christmases and possibly causing psychological trauma to scores of children who, wide-eyed and gaped-mouthed are enjoying staring at the millions of Christmas lights and various animated inflatable displays when their fragile little yuletide minds are suddenly forced to cope with some crazed and likely drunk writer yelling about traffic and calling their parents pig-fuckers and all sorts of bad and profane noise.  Nobody wants that.  So do us all a favor and stay home.
3. As glorious as many of these displays may be in the dark of night, in the morning light, they’re absolutely ghastly.  The only experience I can liken it to is stumbling out of a San Francisco rave at dawn, just as the drugs are wearing off, and you’re forced to go from sexy darkness that’s illuminated only by sexy lasers making even the most drug-addled revelers look good out into the brutal and excruciating dawn, where all your fellow partiers looks like hammered shit and the gorgeous girl you’ve been following around all night now looks like an animated corpse trying to find a ride home.  These yards that only hours before were cutting edge holiday light shows now look dead.  The lights are off, and the owners have turned off the air pumps that keep the inflatable displays inflated, and now they’re just flaccid, lifeless flaps of plastic laying across lawns and roofs like spent condoms tossed on the pavement in the high school parking lot the morning after prom.  It’s gross and depressing.  Which I believe are the exact sorts of feelings Christmas is meant to avoid.

I’m quite dubious about whether or not next Christmas will be in any way “normal,” but whatever’s going on, at least please consider toning down the outside lights and displays next year.  They vex me deeply and make the baby Jesus cry.

N.P.: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” – Gary Hoey

Even when I still believed that Santa Claus was an actual dude with an actual mailing address inside the Arctic Circle, with an actual toy shop at the same address staffed mostly by elves, blah blah blah, I felt, deep down in that dark and vacant space where my soul should have been, that Things Weren’t Right.
Even as toddlers, children understand that there are scary monsters [see The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim and that study where children were given rewritten versions of fairy tales with the scary monsters taken out, and the kids got all pissed off and attacked their teachers’ kneecaps].  Rugrats know that evil lurks, and they resent the hell out of patronizing adults who tell them otherwise.  I certainly did.  Which is why the unipolar morality of the Santa story never really sat well with me: goodness is ostensibly rewarded, but evil goes completely unpunished.  All year long, the promise of every materialistic dream a child may have coming true on Christmas morning is dangled in front of the child’s beady eyes on the condition of “good” behavior during the rest of the year.
I always assumed there was some kind of sliding scale of goodness vs. toys spectrum: if your behavior was superlative and Christ-like all year long, then you get absolutely everything on your list, and perhaps even a few bonus toys.  If you were a minimally decent person for, say, 8 months out of the year, but a bit of a prick the rest of the time, then you might only get a third of the things on your list.  But what of little Adolf and Osama?  What about the little kid who is an absolute bastard every goddamn day of the year?  What of him?  According to the Santa story, nothing.  Not a damn thing. Hell, Santa will even still come by your house: he’ll just leave a piece of coal.  So what?  Who cares? This means that some little fucker can run around terrorizing the neighborhood, lowering property values and ruining everybody’s lives all year long, and the only thing he has to worry about is maybe not getting as many toys as the Goody Two-Shoes next door?  Alll little Adolf has to do is stroll over to Goody’s on the 26th, when the little angel is playing with all of his benevolently hard-earned toys, whack him over the head with a board, take whatever toys he wants, and swagger back home.
No.  That’s just ludicrous.  It is unjust. And it is existentially unsound. There can be no light without darkness.  And there can be no goodness without evil.  That knowledge is innate in human children.  But in the Disneyfied, politically correct culture that is modern day America, apparently parents are afraid of damaging their little snowflakes’ eggshell psyches, We ask our teachers not to use red pen when grading papers, because red is the color of blood and there is an implied threat there.  We’re not going to keep score in little league games because the idea of someone winning necessitates that some lost, and the concept of losing at anything, even a baseball game, is far more than a human being should have to endure.  And oh God, the results are tragic.  Entire generations who cannot conjugate the verbs “to lose” or “to fail.”
I say Enough.  Ya basta!  I say that people in general, but children especially, are far heartier and more resilient than they are ever given credit for.  And it is with that in mind that I suggest that we hit reset and start celebrating Christmas properly.  Let us look back toward Europe, to where the Santa Claus story originated, to get the full story: the story of the Santa’s dark counterpart, Krampus.
If Santa Claus is a right jolly old elf, then Krampus is a bad-ass Christmas demon.  If old Saint Nick is benevolent generosity and reward, Krampus is divine retribution and vengeance.  Krampus is a very satanic-looking demon (I suppose all demons worth their horns are rather satanic-looking): a satyr (in the Roman tradition (as opposed to the Greek)), with massive horns and a bifurcated tail, who is draped in noisy chains and cow bells, and wields a collection of pointy sticks with which (get this) he beats all hell out of children who have been assholes during the previous year.  If children have committed more than the typically venial offenses associated with childhood, Krampus will not simply beat them with his sticks and chains, but will either dismember them, or simply drag them to hell, never to be seen again.  Sometimes Krampus just eats the goddamn kids right there in front of God and everybody.  And don’t think you can go running to Santa to save you from Krampus…no.  Krampus and Santa are good buddies.  Existential friends who enjoy happy hour at der biergarten together.
Krampus does not just molest and abuse vagrant children.  No.  When not dispensing yuletide justice to miscreants, Krampus enjoys goosing attractive women and licking their faces, a la Rick James on a good, crackful night.  Oh yes…Krampus is a straight up poon hound.  Unlike that grandfatherly twat Santa Claus, ever the family man, the Christmas demon crushes mad ass on the reg.  There is no Mrs. Krampus.  No need.  Krampus has game and he wants to fist your mother.  After he eats your soul.
Speaking of eating, don’t bother trying to placate Krampus with cookies and milk.  He cannot be plied with baked goods, and Krampus is notoriously lactose-intolerant.  You would be better off leaving whiskey and steak, but those will not likely work either.  To avoid the wrath of Krampus this night, there is only one path: The path of righteousness, and the avoidance of assholishness throughout the rest of the year.

N.P.: “What We Do” – Devo

Season’s greetings, dear readers!  Apologies for not having time for a proper post today, but I’m busy preparing for Krampus Nacht.
For those of you uncultured heathens who are blissfully unaware, Krampus is a horned, anthropomorphic figure from Central European folklore who shows up every December 5th to scare the living shit out of rotten kids (and their shitty parents).  He’s like Santa Claus’ evil twin brother, if that twin brother had a goat’s head and carried a bundle of birch branches chains for whipping purposes. Festive, right?  Hell yes.
For me, this means procuring sufficient liquor in case Krampus happens to stop by for a break from thrashing recalcitrant children.  Like those little shits across the street.  They’re doomed, and their parents know it.  Over the weekend, they hit me up for tips on Krampus-proofing their house.  Fools.  The righteous vengeance of Krampus is unstoppable, inescapable.  But I felt obligated to tell them something, so I made some shit up.
First, there’s the traditional garlic on the windowsills – because everyone knows that Krampus hates garlic. Or is that vampires? Ah well, better safe than sorry. Next, there’s the strategic placement of fluffy pillows around the house. You know, to cushion the blow in case Krampus gets in and starts swinging those birch branches around.
Then there’s the all-important task of stocking up on comfort food. Because if you’re going to spend the night cowering in fear, you might as well do it with a tub of ice cream and a family-sized bag of chips.
And let’s not forget the most important part of Krampus-proofing: crafting the perfect ‘I’ve been a good boy/girl’ sign to hang on the front door. Because nothing says ‘please don’t whip me, Mr. Krampus’ quite like a brightly colored sign made with glitter glue and desperation.
Anyway, brave reader, so much for them.  Brace yourself: Krampus Nacht is tomorrow!

N.P.: “Till the Day I Die” – Halford

Happy Thanksgiving!

N.P.: “What We Need Is a Hero” – Alan Silvestri

There are these two books.  The first one I started writing a full 10 years before I knew what it was actually about.  Yeah, the whole thing has been and continues to be just as bizarre as it sounds.  Anyway, it’s non-fiction and deeply personal.  Call it a psychological memoir.  The second one I started to blow off steam at the end of the day from writing the first one.  I intentionally started writing the most ridiculously politically incorrect thing I could come up with and ride it out to its preposterous conclusion.  Anyway, it’s fiction and best described as a supervillain origin story.  Probably the darkest satire I could come up with.

I’ve been working on both of these books with no end date in mind…just a nebulous idea of what I was doing.  Then suddenly, late last year, both books were suddenly ready enough to be made into proposals.  Which means they’re ready to be sold, and then, after some significant rewrites, published.  This would typically be time for celebration.  But instead, this is when the weirdness really hit.  For a variety of reasons, I suddenly had zero interest in publishing either of them.  As you might imagine, this triggered the running, screaming, existential fantods.

Here’s the thing, dear reader: on a personal level, publishing books is a Pain in the Ass.  The effects it has on one’s life are far too myriad to begin to list here, but suffice it to say that every personal dynamic changes, and those changes last years.  It takes a toll, and it’s a very worthwhile question to ask: is it fucking worth it?  But that’s just me in my head.  The larger, more compelling reasons to not publish either of these things are external, societal factors over which I have no control.  Again, to wit:

No American publisher is testicularly solid enough to touch these books.  Maybe the psychological memoir, but sure as shit not the novel.  Even if I did publish the memoir on a label, that publisher would cave to the woke slaves, pull the title and cut ties as soon as they found out about the novel and felt obligated to feign outrage.

And even if anybody did have the grapes to actually stand by either book, there’s no reason to expect that they wouldn’t take unacceptable editorial action in the future to retroactively censor my work to conform to the latest moronic rules of what the mob allows to be said.  So much for the big, legacy publishers.

Which brings us to The Reading Public.  Let me explicitly say that this does not apply to you, dearest reader.  But the rest of these bastards…Jesus.

Primarily, social media is to blame.  Social media seems to have made otherwise fine audiences into absolutely insufferable cunts.  At least half the headlines in the entertainment press for the past 5-10 years are about fan reactions.  “Fans outraged at ending of latest episode.”  Or they have a problem with a certain character.  Or they are insistent that, in their learned estimation, the ending of a movie is wrong.  Who gives a shit.  Write your own story.  Shoot your own movie.  [Note: The treatment of J.K. Rowling has been absolutely abhorrent.  I admire her restraint.  If I had her amount of Fuck You Money, I’d spend a bunch of it hiring an entire platoon of people with ASPD to spend their entire days mercilessly fucking with my detractors.  Then again, I can’t even imagine what happens to one’s perspective and priorities when one’s wealth is measured in billions.  Perhaps I’ll mellow if I ever make it, but perhaps not.]

And fan fiction?  All of that can fuck right off.  Maybe other authors are okay with it…some seem to find it amusing.  I personally would litigate viciously.

But whatever my issues with the reading public, they are almost totally eclipsed by my issues with the greater American public, at least the more ignorant and boisterous factions.

Perhaps I’ll go into more detail of this soon and alienate even more friends and readers. But not today.  Today is Sunday, which is for relaxing and windy walks with puppies and such.

N.P.: “I’m Not Giving Up Tonight (David Holmes Remix) – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds