Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Happy New Years Eve, dear reader.  I hope the last one was good, and the next is even better.

I do a lot of bitching about how mercilessly hot the summers are here in Fecal Creek, and they are, in fact, brutal.  The sky seems completely empty during the summer, offering no protection, no barrier against the nuclear fire of that no-so-far star around which we endlessly orbit.  And it just drags on for ages, the summer does.  It’s hard not to take it personally, day after day after week after month.  It’s punitive.  For six months out of every year, I’m miserable.  I absolutely hate it.
But from the first of November until the end of April, The Creek is a fine place to be.  The air is cold and crisp, the skies are dark and chaotic, and the trees are angry and menacing, like they want to fight.  It’s beautiful; a reminder of why I stay here. It helps me forget about the hellish summer for a few months, and makes enduring them worthwhile.
I’m focused on the weather today because we’re in the middle of an atmospheric river, and it’s just been The Great Deluge here the last few days.  I’ve enjoyed every minute.
2022 was a great year at The Safehouse.  Of course, because life here requires total devotion to coolness and secrecy, I regrettably can’t give you any details, but it will all be told eventually.  This year was also exceptionally challenging…monumentally challenging, even.  But every challenge was risen to.  And I learned a lot.
I am grateful and truly appreciative of so much this year.  I don’t take any of it for granted.
Thank you, dear reader, for another weird, wonderful year.  I think this next one’s gonna be even weirder.  And I promise not to bitch about the weather as much.

N.P.: “Wail of Sumer/And There Will Your Heart Be Also” – Fields of the Nephilim

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

Merry Christmas, dear reader…sorry about the belatedness.  So more appropriately, happy Boxing Day.

N.P.: “Christmas Is The Time to Say, ‘I Love You'” – Billy Squier

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

TO: The Honorable Kevin Skutchinson
Mayor of Fecal Creek, CA
November 15, 2022
RE: These Stupid Goddamn Traffic Circles

Dear Skutch,

First, allow me to apologize for that weirdness on Thanksgiving night. I didn’t know that was your motorcade…I assumed it was the Governor, again…you know how he gets around the holidays. I’ve asked him to stop. Anyway, I’m just sorry as hell that that happened. You are always welcome at The Safehouse.

But never mind that…we’ve got more important cats to skin, namely, what is starting, to my jaded eyes at least, to look like a proliferation of traffic circles in this idyllic town of ours.

I doubt I need to remind you of the last time I attempted to bring this problem to your attention, back when you put that first despicable roundabout in right in front of City Hall. My months of letters of desperate invective went unanswered, and ultimately I was forced to drive endless laps around that ridiculous traffic circle whilst laying on the horn just to get you to acknowledge my concerns. But after all that, you did exactly nothing. Even now, what…two years later…I still have to deal with that monstrosity at least once a week, when I have to come downtown to re-up on groceries and ammunition. And at least once a week, I’m doing multiple laps around that thing, blaring the horn and flying my favorite finger directly at your office. And still, nothing.

And let’s be honest here, Kevin…if it was just you and me driving around this town, the traffic circles would be a non-issue…we would cruise around with complete insouciance to the traffic circle or any other artificial impediment to our progress: we would handle them masterfully. But then there are all these other motherfuckers on the road with us that mess everything up for everybody. You and I both know, as wonderful as this little town of ours is, the citizenry is completely inept behind the wheel. I don’t know what it is with the landed gentry of Fecal Creek, but they cannot fucking drive. They can’t even handle to the right-turn/merge lanes at every major intersection in The Creek: no need to stop, even on a red, but at least half the time, some old bat just decides it’s time to stop and then stays stopped despite the banshee screams of a dozen horns directly behind her. Goddammit, Skutch! How can you possibly expect a mind like that to artfully cope at all with the unnecessary complexities of a traffic circle?

And now I see you’re putting in another traffic circle, but this one much closer to The Safehouse, at the intersection of Bedlam and Squalor. This is completely unacceptable. Any roundabout in the United States is a waste of both time and money. Any roundabout in Fecal Creek, I can’t help but take personally, but placing one so close to my home is just egregious.

This may mean war. I’d hope not, man…you know I’m a pacifist at heart, but you may have pushed me too far this time.

We must draw the line at this, Mayor Skutchinson. I demand that you remove these traffic circles immediately and return Fecal Creek to its previous state of blissful ignorance with regards to the traffic circle menace.

I know I can count on you, Kevin. Make it happen.

Sincerely,
Your pissed constituent,
Jayson Gallaway

N.P.: “Head Over Heels” – JD McPherson

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

I’ve been totally snowed in, dear reader! ‘Twas amazing. I was supposed to return to the Safehouse from that alpine retreat on Monday, but that simply didn’t happen.  I couldn’t leave.  Sure, there was a big weird SUV parked outside, equipped with all-wheel drive and snow tires that was perfectly capable of getting back over the pass at any point.  But honestly, I hadn’t seen that SUV or anything else outside since the snow started dumping last Sunday. Everything disappeared, buried under massive snowdrifts.  Which turned to ice.  And I’m simply not equipped to attempt to access a vehicle whilst it’s buried in snow and ice.  There are special tools for that sort of thing, I should think, and I don’t have any of them.

Anyway, it was a wonderful winter vacation, and now I’m back in the Low Lands and anxious to get back to it.

N.P.: “Get Down” – Emigrate, Peaches

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

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.

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

One of the more egregious of the myriad stupidities plaguing our society, that being the insipid Daylight Saving Time, ends tonight. “We get to sleep an extra hour tonight,” cry the cretins interviewed on the local news. No, you don’t. No time is either gained or lost in this farce…time remains unchanged. Just as sticking feathers up your ass doesn’t make you a chicken, nor does setting the clock to some new time do anything at all except increase the number of heart attacks and traffic accidents, cost hundreds of millions of dollars in lost productivity, and generally piss people off.

This stupid tradition dates back to when we were an agrarian society and it was thought that an extra hour of daylight would mean more time to work in the fields. Now, not only are we not an agrarian society, but most people don’t even work outside. And for those that do, it’s not like they’re going to be able to work an extra hour because it’s light out longer. It doesn’t matter if it’s light out until 10pm if you have to be at work at 8am.

Daylight Saving Time is a holdover from a simpler, dumber time. Knock it off.

N.P.: “Swamp” – Talking Heads

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

I met up with a friend who recently decided to move to Fecal Creek. So, natch, we wanted to figure out how close we’d be living to each other, so I reminded him of the exact address of the Safehouse, and he looked it up on Google Maps. The results showed that his place is 2.5 miles from me, but it’s really less than a mile away from Point A to Point B. When he saw the search results, he said, “Two and a half miles? It seems a lot closer than that…maybe a mile as the crow flies.” Well, what the hell does that mean? I mean, I know what it means, but what relevance does it have to me? I’m clearly not a crow, nor am I capable of flight. I don’t give a fuck how long it would take me to get there if I was a goddamn bird. “As the crow drives” would be much more accurate, but of course completely absurd as I would never ever let some random crow behind the wheel of the Panty Dropper. How about something I could actually use, like “as the drunk stumbles.” I know exactly how far that is. “As the pelvis thrusts” might work. Measure distances in the number of pelvic thrusts it takes cover them. I do occasionally navigate from room-to-room via pelvic thrusts, usually when I’m in a particularly good mood. So as weird as it is, “as the pelvis thrusts” is significantly more useful to me than “as the crow flies.”

“As the junky sweats,” “as the pervert leers,” and “as the schizophrenic mumbles darkly,” would all also be decidedly more helpful than “as the crow fucking flies.” It is worth noting that I am neither a junky, nor a pervert, nor a schizophrenic. And I’m not a drunk either, but I can relate more closely to any of those categories than I can a goddamn crow.

N.P.: “They Came In” – Butthole Surfers

Art by Tasty Piece,©️ The Safehouse Collection 2022

One dear reader did some bitching about me not doing my part for Halloween by not writing a great Halloween story and posting it here.  I replied gently, saying as down for Halloween as I may be, I simply do not have time to write a good Halloween story, let alone a great one.  But I do have a couple minutes to write a really bad Halloween story, so why not.  Here goes:

“Nine Was Better”

Kevin had only been 10 years old for two days, but he was already convinced he wasn’t any good at it. Nine was better. There weren’t as many ghosts last year. In fact, there weren’t any at all. Nine was definitely better. Kevin turned over to watch his father on the couch, with his back to Kevin, swiping angrily at his phone. His mother was in the kitchen, cooking. Kevin’s little sister, Katie, was running around the house screaming. Kevin wondered if any of them even noticed he existed. He wanted to be nine again.

On Halloween night, Kevin went out trick-or-treating with his friends. He was dressed as a ghost, with a sheet over his head. But he didn’t feel like a ghost. He felt like a little boy in a sheet. His friends were laughing and having fun, but Kevin couldn’t enjoy it. He just wanted it to be over.

When they got home, Kevin’s father was waiting for them. He was drunk and angry, and he started yelling at Kevin’s friends. They quickly ran away, leaving Kevin alone with his father. His father grabbed Kevin by the arm and dragged him into the house. Kevin’s mother was in the kitchen, cooking. She didn’t say anything as Kevin’s father started to hit him.

Kevin curled up in a ball on the floor, trying to make himself small. He wished he could disappear. He wished he could go back to being nine years old. Nine was better. There weren’t as many ghosts last year. Nine was better.

Ever since he’d turned ten, which was an entire two days ago, he’d suddenly been able to see ghosts. Which was really starting to piss him off, because he didn’t believe in ghosts. And he especially didn’t believe in ghosts that were currently haunting his ten year old ass.

“Boo.” One of them said, a little girl with long dark hair, who was currently perched on Kevin’s bedpost. He glared at her. “What do you want?” He asked, feeling beyond annoyed. The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just here because I’m bored, I guess.” Kevin frowned. “You’re a ghost. Shouldn’t you be haunting people or something?” The girl shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

Kevin sighed and laid down, putting his pillow over his face. Maybe if he ignored them, they would go away. He was getting really tired of being able to see ghosts. He just wanted to be nine again, when things were simpler and he didn’t have to deal with any of this crap.

But no matter how much he wished it, he couldn’t go back to being nine. He was stuck being ten, whether he liked it or not. And that meant dealing with ghosts, whether he liked it or not.

At least, until he figured out how to make them go away. Where ghosts just a part of life once you turned 10? Or was it just around Halloween? Halloween was only about a week away…why was it still so hot?

“Are you hot? I mean, do ghosts get hot?” Kevin asked the little girl with long dark hair, who was still obstinately perched on Kevin’s bedpost.

“I’m okay,” said the ghost.

Kevin knew damn well it was far too hot for just before Halloween. He grabbed the small remote from his nightstand and clicked the ceiling fan on. The ceiling fan spun to life aggressively, and instantly blew the ghosts away. Kevin stared for a beat, then chuckled.

“Problem solved,” he said, as he climbed into bed.

He may not have liked that he could see ghosts, but at least he knew how to get rid of them. And until he found a way to make them go away for good, he would just have to deal with it. For now, he’d just keep the fan on. It was hotter than hell anyway.

Happy Halloween, dear reader.

N.P.: “…Clarisse” – Venom