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Fresh guacamole:
This is another dish that hardly needs a recipe, if ever there was a "master" one to begin with. Mash avocados. Chop aromatics. Combine and add optional adulterants. (Your Humble Narrator has mixed in Roquefort cheese in the past, my Mom swears by a little mayonnaise, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hips_lips_tits says bacon is good) Serve to greedy guests or snarf it all yourself.
Lime juice is also recommended to stave off premature oxidation.
Cilantro garnish for display purposes only. Lundberg's rice chips instead of corn. Pretty blue bowl by Wal-Mart.
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The darkness isn't enough to keep the circles from closing. The freezing isn't enough to keep the borders between worlds from perforating. The will to exist isn't enough to shore up the desire to live.
Hunger isn't a good enough reason to continue masticating and recycling and eliminating. Desire isn't a good enough reason to continue coveting and wanting and collecting.
God isn't enough to keep looking up. Selene isn't enough to forgo sleep. Buddha isn't enough to seek consciousness via an empty stomach.
Whatever you do, however much you do, no matter how well you do it; it's never enough, it doesn't matter, it's all for naught.
It's never enough.
I was never here.
Because there was nothing to begin with.
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Vanilla-rosewater cupcakes 2.0: (beta)
While visiting Orange County after returning from India, ratherunlikely took me to a vegan café, one of several in Southern California, called Native Foods. In addition to unreasonably large portions and some fairly kick-ass chili fries, the Costa Mesa location (situated in a nouveau-hippie open-air mini-mall called The Camp, which is where this picture was taken) also features a spectrum of vegan desserts, including the ubiquitous cupcake selection. Resisting popular opinion and adhering to good taste, we skipped over the chocolate and chose the vanilla option, which was piled up with a bouffant of girly buttercream and garnished with dried rose petals.
This was most likely the cupcake that inspired Your Humble Narrator, albeit in a subtle, roundabout, time-delayed way; to try baking with rose water. Version 1.0 were a bit of a letdown, if only because the safety net of an established recipe didn't leave much wiggle-room for expansion, plus there was the one time in a thousand that the cake would have benefitted from a complementary frosting, and there was none to be had.
This version is still in beta because I'm testing it for a future social engagement, plus I still need to scope out the craft and gourmet shops in Thrillsville for dried rose petals.
The right cupcake will get you drunk kisses from Rock Band-playing girls.
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Totally Somewhat disingenuous Cincinnati-style chili:
Contrary to what has been documented on any given travelogue program on Food Network, Cincinnati chili's hallmark is not that it's served on top of spaghetti like some common jarred pasta sauce. Rather, Cincinnati chili gets its particular regional designation owing to its skewed list of spices; in addition to the de rigeur foundation of cumin, chili powder, and tomato, Cincinnati chili also includes cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and cocoa powder. Now, anyone who's been to even a halfway-authentic Mexican restaurant will recognize the latter adulterants are also key ingredients in making mole poblano; and indeed, a pot of chili made this way does turn out darker in color and richer and more complex in flavors.
And like most regional gastronomic favorites, this one comes with its own flowchart; Cincinnati chili doesn't have beans, it's served with oyster crackers only, the spaghetti goes down first, (unless you order beans, then they go underneath the spaghetti, or sometimes not, it depends on which dive diner in the Queen City you order it from) etc., etc. With this level of anal retention paid just to construction, it's no wonder people think of the spaghetti-presentation when they think of Cincinnati chili (if they think of it at all) and not the chili itself.
Other than veganizing the chili with TVP, we stuck more or less to the mole-style flavorings for this batch, although we did add a can of drained and rinsed black beans to the pot because...because...erm...uhm...
EFF YOU CINCINNATI I DO WHAT I WANT
Vegan cheezy sauce on top, and that's not spaghetti underneath; not exactly, anyway:
At hips_lips_tits's suggestion, we employed the peculiar characteristics of garden oddity cucurbita pepo, the spaghetti squash. Whether baked, boiled, or irradiated, when cooked the flesh of this ordinary-looking winter vegetable blooms into ribbony strands which look like something from the special effects department on the set of John Carpenter's The Thing. They also taste nothing like semolina.
Tip: spaghetti squash is relatively cheap, but you'll get more yield if you cut up your squash first and scoop out the pulp and seeds before you cook it. It's a little more work to hack it apart when it's still raw, but it's worth it, if only to avoid grindhouse-grade scenes like the one above.
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"They’ll kill us if they can. Every year they grow smaller. Every year they hate us more. We must not remind them that giants walk the earth."
"People look to you to save them...probably most of the time...from their own mistakes. They do things...knowingly...wrong. And they look to you afterward to make them right. Why do you bother?"
"Because I can."
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In the years since Your Humble Narrator stopped collecting comic books graphic novels in earnest and now, a lot of changes have taken place, some good, some bad, some ridiculous, but mostly in the way of infrastructure; the general mechanics of how these individual imaginary universes work has more or less stayed the same. Characters come and go and come back, but not a whole lot of intrinsic change takes place; paper gets glossier, colors and inks graduate from analog to digital, and costumes more closely resemble mufti than disguises, but if not for cosmetic changes, it's more or less the same as it was left.
That is, completely and insufferably silly.
Which doesn't preclude foregoing the recent twenty-five-cent sale our local used bookstore had on their overstock:
 
It was sheer luck to capture the first twelve issues of Alpha Flight's initial run. Unlike the majority of titles that were available at the time, Alpha Flight distinguished itself with stories that focused on a single character at a time; everyone appears as a team only twice, in the premiere issue and issue #12. This might have weakened any other title, if not for John Byrne's superb pencilling and evocative storytelling that takes pains to relate the characters to their Canadian homeland.
Issue six, "Snowblind," is a highlight in the first series with a unique presentation. When Snowbird faces off against the resurrected nature spirit Kolomaq, her foe conjures up a blizzard to place her at a disadvantage. The entire middle half of the issue is all but bereft of art; just panel after panel of white backdrop broken with speech and thought balloons and action phoneticals. Byrne even manages to insert the old joke about a polar bear in a snowstorm.
Another more recent series that only ran for a dozen issues was Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman. By treating Kal-El as a human with a very heavy crown on his head, and less like an alien god, Morrison is able to accomplish what a lot of reboots and retcons have failed at in the past; tell fresh, engaging stories with venerable, established characters and situations. Frank Quitely's exquisite pencils (reminiscent of work from Enki Bilal and Moebius) emphasize the everyday imperfections possessed by everyone, but especially with the elements normally associated with the Man Of Steel: his drooping forelock, his red underpants, the sheer beefy bulk of his physique.
 
In order to reconcile a convoluted continuity and consolidate their bloated character roster, DC concocted the Crisis on Infinite Earths (almost always preceded in canon with "so-called") for their 50th anniversary. While the merging of the multiverse would ultimately be undone in the following years, the Crisis itself spawned a bunch of reboots for almost every major player, effectively ending the Silver Age and ushering in the Modern Age. George Pérez, one of the co-writers for Crisis, dominated the scene for the better part of the 1980s, producing memorable covers for Wonder Woman's second run, among several hundred others.
Not quite as ornate or lifelike, but equally skilled in distinct and consistent characterizations, is Walt Simonson, who wrote and drew a huge chunk of The Mighty Thor's initial run. His blocky yet detailed style follows the basic ideals of forced perspective; the larger the picture needed, the more intricate it becomes, and vice versa; the smaller or more far away, the less distinct the features are.
(Fun fact: Walt Simonson is married to Louise Simonson, writer of countless New Mutants and X-Factor strories [Apocalypse was one of her better ideas] and creator of cult favorite Power Pack.)
For Thor #337, 338, and 339, they introduced one of the queerest characters in the Marvel rogues gallery, Beta Ray Bill. Bill (later Beta Ray Thor) was an alien cyborg who apparently had sufficient valor, intestinal fortitude, and upper body strength to hold aloft Thor's hammer Mjolnir, which transmogrified him into a doppelgänger of the thunder god, with all the rights and powers therewith.
 
No matter how fervently any demographic slavers after their popular culture of choice, there always comes a statute of limitations when the cool factor runs out, which usually coincides at around the ten-year mark for the convenience of history. For some reason, the events of the 1970s form a middle ground from which more marginally acceptable materials spin away from, both into the past and the future. Therefore, the 1960s and 1980s were both hipper than the 1970s, but the 1950s and 1990s were superior to both, etc.
Why Marvel decided the 1970s was a ripe time for a World War II revival in comicdom remains a mystery, just like the resurgence of classic rock in the 1980s or the dominance of franchise reboots in the 2000s. Invaders #17 not only features Warrior Woman (an obvious homage to grindhouse favorite Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS) but a cameo by Der Fuehrer himself, which highlights one of the basic failings of comic book storytelling: the general unwillingness of writers to fully integrate the actions of their characters into the larger events of history. Superman fought in WWII as well, but closer examination of his actions reveals that his "service" was limited to more symbolic activities designed to boost morale and bolster the American fighting spirit; he never took part in any documented campaigns against Fortress Europe.
When you've been writing and drawing stories of radioactive freaks and alien vigilantes for fifty, sixty, seventy years, the make-believe alternate history you create can get a little out of control. Marvel realized that with their Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, but DC did the idea one better with their Who's Who series. Marvel has always been the more left-brain-oriented of the major comic houses, and DC has always played more fast and loose with logic. Both encyclopedias featured wraparound cover art and CIA-esque dossiers on major and minor denizens, but Who's Who mixed it up with original masthead title art instead of a standardized font and action shots instead of Michaelangelo-esque full-body poses of each character.
Maybe comic books graphic novels don't fall into any of the major food groups of literature; novels, short stories, or poetry. Maybe they exist outside the expected territories, like comets or daywalking vampires or late-model sedans with government plates. Maybe also then they provide a different kind of cultural nutrition than their text-only forefathers or their celluloid and video contemporaries.
Or maybe they really are just funnybooks to distract us from the real world, if only for a few minutes at a time.
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Chocolate balsamic raspberry cupcakes:
A good idea, just not a particularly satisfactory return on the investment of time and resources.
Balsamic vinegar is a queer and unique philter. Like garden-variety vinegars, its base is grape juice that's been allowed to spoil ferment, except juice destined with balsamic intentions is reduced into a syrup and then aged from anywhere between twelve and twenty-five years in a series of progressively smaller wooden casks. (to concentrate the flavor) After decanting, the final product is dark and glossy and boasts multiple layers of varying complexity and depth; sweet and sour, smoky and floral, unctuous and earthy.
(Caveat emptor: Bottles boasting the impressive-sounding knighthood of "balsamic vinegar of Modena" are at best, inexpensive facsimiles and at worst, bullshit. Check the label; if the ingredient list includes "caramel color," then what's inside is most likely just white vinegar that's been adulterated to imitate the look and surface taste of real balsamic. But considering that bottles of truly traditional balsamic can go for upwards of $500 USD, only a hipster foodie asshole would judge you for keepin' it on the cheap.)
Unfortunately, all these delicate flavors are wasted here; they're either obliterated from the batter by the heat of baking, or buried underneath the bombast of chocolate and sugar in the frosting. The frosting was an especially frustrating part of this experiment. Since it involves incorporating a mash of fresh raspberries macerated in balsamic vinegar into the requisite buttercream formula, the resultant mess ate over three cups of confectioner's sugar before it even started to take on any kind of volume, and even after an hour in the fridge it was still too goopy to generate stiff peaks.
Disappointing.
Oh well. At least they were probably better than the chocolate garlic cupcakes Your Humble Narrator was also considering.
Probably. Possibly. Maybe.
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Rose water and pistachio cupcakes, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World:
Rose water, despite the romantic nomenclature, is actually a lowly by-product of the procedure for extracting rose oil, which itself can be as simple as steeping rose petals in water, like making tea. During the distillation process, rose oil floats to the surface and is skimmed off for use in perfume and cosmetics. The scented liquid that's left over is called rose water; and while nowhere near as potent as rose oil, it's still a very fragrant culinary ingredient whose flavor and aroma are hardy enough to weather cupcake-inflating temperatures.
The other part of this story is that Your Humble Narrator had every intention on making a rose water buttercream to go along with these delicate beauties, and would have if Cat Spit Kitchen had not manifested a dearth of confectioner's sugar, a vital ingredient in pumping air into margarine and bloating it into a sweetened monstrosity exponentially more voluminous than its original dimensions.
So, a garnish of chopped pistachios instead. Easy-peasy, and no artistic skill required. Still a crowd-pleaser.
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This is your iPod on Crystal Method:
Any questions?
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What about the rest of them? What about the ones forgotten by years of dust and strata of mildewed cardboard? What about the #1s, the #100s, the final issues?
You forget about the world outside the soap bubble, your eyes fade to gray from watching the sun change from rainbow to invisible silence, you think the traffic can guide itself into Möbius stripes, (sic) so you float along suspended by Ernie Balls and rosin-rubbed twine.
Airtight Garage seems so long ago. The Way Things Work, Final Fantasy, The Night Kitchen, etc. The great expanse of concrete and grass, light and water, glass and neon below and above and below.
Where do our kid fears go for finishing school? What do they wear to commencement? What is their last unselfish act before casting aside their chrysalis and blooming into a new business model for avant-garde throwback records?
And another thing. Five more minutes. One more time. Keep going around the block. Move around to the far side of the tree, out of the sun. Keep down. Lower.
The world was made in the image of a calcified and myopic thing with two-dimensional thinking. The world was created by cut-and-paste. Repeated repetition only hastens the ennui of the immediate atmosphere and aggravates the cysts that threaten to burst below.
Wither you? A desktop icon? A misspelled footnote? A flat picture at the bottom of the bowl?
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Your Humble Narrator decided a while back that the common and disparate elements that make up the science fiction genre are, appropriately enough, of an alien enough composition and arrangement to defy conventional wisdom and the natural human tendency to pigeonhole, label, and define. Like other elemental intangibles like love or enlightenment or happiness, science fiction may very well suffer through centuries of criticism, analysis, deconstruction, translation, and reinvention in an attempt to coalesce its core meanings and values; but will also most probably only prove itself as resilient and slippery a subject to crack open as any others examined and reviled by poets, scientists, and vicars alike.
  
Science fiction is the sprout of an overactive imagination, of a sight beyond sight, of minds that see a thousand different things where you and I only see a handful. Bemoaning the death of science fiction is like bemoaning the death of jazz; these are both things whose downfall and demise seem perpetually imminent, but never reach a conclusive resolution. The day that there is a clear, unambiguous, black-and-white definition of science fiction is the day sci-fi is put into the ground for good.
It's so difficult to crystallize science fiction because it is not a pure genre; it's a portmanteau, a conglomeration, a mutt. Science fiction is an ill-supplied generation ship, making its way along a hastily-plotted course, losing bits and pieces here and picking up supplements and add-ons there. Science fiction is schizophrenic and obsessive-compulsive and codependent, it makes its own rules and then flaunts them, it's irrational and materialistic and very, very, silly.
Science fiction is fantasy in everything but name, but also, true to form, in name as well. After all, what is, for example, a ride to the moon but a purely fantastic notion? The only thing that seems to separate the flavor of such a journey, science fiction or fantasy, are the machinations employed to arrive at the destination ultimately. If it's a giant hollow bullet shot from a space gun, or an orbital elevator, or a dematerialization machine, it's a fair case for science fiction. But what if we're carried away on the neck of a giant steam-filled duck, or we dare to penetrate the ether of space on silk wings hot-glued to our shoulder blades, or maybe simply bilocate using the psychocreative powers of an evolutionarily accelerated mind; what's that, then?
Either way, we get to go to the Moon.
Related: The War On Science Fiction.
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Miso soup:
Buried underneath the shredded vegetation on top is a fortification of buckwheat soba noodles and tofu.
Miso is a paste made with fermented soybeans and any number of grains, (usually rice, but barley, rye, hemp, and even chickpea, amaranth, and quinoa are not unknown) and while it comes in a pride flag of colors, they all fall into one of two strengths, sweet or strong. Generally speaking, sweet misos are lighter in color and flavor, (good for warmer months) while strong misos are darker and more robust. (ideal for colder seasons) Miso is kind of like a more versatile, Japanese version of Vegemite or Marmite, in that it's used as much as a spread or topping and pickling medium as it is for the eponymous soup.
Traditionally, miso soup is made with dashi, a simple broth made with either kelp, sardines, or shiitake mushrooms; but iconoclasts, starving students, and cheap bastards alike can make do with just hot water. Since the flavor of different misos forms such a spectrum, and people's palates vary just as wildly, a step-by-step recipe for miso soup seems a little absurd. Suffice it to say that one should use enough water or broth for the end result, and about as many tablespoons of miso paste as there are cups of liquid. The only real rule is not to let the miso boil; heat the water to a simmer, remove from the heat, and stir in a bit of the hot water in with the miso in a separate receptacle to form a slurry. (this also keeps the miso paste from clumping up) Then just add the miso slurry back into the pot of hot water to taste, and fortify as you see fit.
Chopsticks for photographic effect only. Who eats soup with pointed sticks? You could lose an eye that way.
The weather never starts to turn until you make the effort to prepare food that bolsters the spirit during such a season.
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Tomato sammich on sourdough with storebought tabouli and olive medley:
Due to my time in India, I missed the lion's share of the tomato harvest this year that usually abounds in This Great State. Last nite I was shared on the last gasps of the season's bounty, and while it's a shame that the transition to winter vegetables seems especially quick this time around, there's comfort in that these summer jewels are all the sweeter for their scarcity.
Purist foodie assholes may swear by the strict unrecipe of sliced ripe tomatoes shoved inbetween two pieces of sandwich loaf unencumbered with a support system of other ingredients, but smart gourmands like Your Humble Narrator and hips_lips_tits know that the already sublime flavors of solanum lycopersicum can be elevated to ambrosia-like levels with the judicious application of mayonnaise; or, if you're really in the know, its superior cousin Vegenaise. (you don't have to be vegan to think it's the bomb) Similar to the adage that the flavors of a properly-seasoned and -cooked hamburger can get lost when buried underneath an excess of superfluous toppings, when sweet tomato juice mixes with the twang of mayo, the idiotically simple 1 + 1 effect it has on your tongue can be more revelatory in its simplicity.
Salt and pepper optional, but welcome. The plate is literally just for the photo shoot, this thing was eaten standing over the kitchen sink, and not just because it makes a bit of a drippy mess after the first few bites. (the spongeworthiness of your bread will dictate how much gets sopped up and how much ends up on your shirt front) If one of the true measures of a human being is how we eat, (if not necessarily what, how much, or with whom) then what could be a more quintessential example of American behavior than eating at your desk, or eating a sammich over the sink, or eating leftover takeout straight from the carton with the refrigerator door still open at two o'clock in the morning?
Easily the fastest food you will ever eat. Just like summer, it's gone before you know it, and like the fruit it is, it's more representative of the true nature of a season that is too often defined by unreasonable movie boners, truncated time off, and melanoma days.
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It takes about two weeks, it takes about a year, it takes forever.
The more you do it, the more you want it. The more you're away from it, the more you miss it. The longer you miss it, the less you miss it.
Distance equals loss plus time. Y/N?
The roots you put down are not necessarily subject to gravity. Gravity is a surface world concept, and the underworld pays no heed to it. The underworld may read by the light of a atomized sun, but they have no lunar goddess to watch over them.
Places don't change, people do. A person changes, but people stay the same. Places burn down, places get plowed under, places get erased and rebuilt and forgotten.
How long did you think you could hold on to your kid fears? How long did you think you would be able to do what you want, when you want, how you want? How long did you think it would take for everything to stop being funny, for everything to start having a purpose, for the Holy Trinity of Me, Myself, and I to be revealed as unfounded, illusory, a mildly fantastic veil?
It takes forever. It takes a minute. It's already happened.
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The words don't come as quickly when you call anymore. The flow from the source is a little dampened, a little sluggish, a little more dammed up than before. The muses don't layover as long as they have in the past, lingering over soups and croutons and petit fours. The days are just a little longer now, a little duskier, a little more glaring in the sun and little blurrier in the eve. The mornings are more suicidal, the afternoons more starving, the nights more diabetic. It takes all your reserved efforts to summon sufficient anger to banish the waking hours from the slate. The days are still packed. The nights are still warm to the touch and filled with pollen and lightning bugs and the stench of late bloomers from the yonder fields. They just fray at the edges faster, they just oxidize more easily, they just crumble to dust under halogens and sodium lights and neon as well as Sol's baleful leer. This is your body on the effervescence of soda bubbles, on the sandpaper grade of peanut shell dust, on the lowball high of a final first hit. This is your brain on saltwater and toffee, decaf and chlorine, Red Bull and serotonin. This is your heart on unrequited vicariousness, on late summer nostalgia, on retroactive geographic and neurological displacement. It's not you, it's the planet. It's not you, it's the army. It's not you, it's the season. It's not you, it's the harvest, it's the BPM, it's the light leakage. It's the time spent in the pool, it's the forgotten promises, it's the birthdays spent underground. It's the countdown that reaches 0:07, it's the chemical properties of the drug that spell out your name upside-down in alphanumerics, it's the triple word score on a monosyllabic. It's not you, it's him. It's not you, it's her. It's not you, it's not you, it's not you... This is your brain on you. ⎋
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As if the fragile shelf life of your average paperback book wasn't already being shortened by the steadily declining population of active readers and the encroachment of electronic media, factor in the homogenization of popular writers' styles and narrowcasting of specific genres to the most common demographics. And while it's no new news that tastes change, audiences are fickle, and editors pass on manuscripts that aren't likely to sell, it's kind of sad to see once burgeoning genres of books that garnered legions of loyal fans reduced to moldering items in the bargain bin.
Case in point; the all-but-obsolete Western:
  
If science fiction book covers are predominately green and blue, and thrillers and spy novels lean towards reds and blacks, and these themes are deduced by the individual subject matter of the stories, (blue to off-set the pitch of deep space and green for the archetypal tone of an E.T.'s skin; red for explosions and gunshots and the inevitably spilled blood, and black for the dark corners and alleys that agents from both sides invariably skulk about in) then it only figures that the covers of Western novels and stories would take on the shades of the over-romanticized open range. Pale yellows and dun browns abound, accented with the black hats of the black hats and red splotches of kerchiefs and Colt Army exit wounds.
The three covers above are so remarkably similar in their elements and composition as to be spooky. All three of the primary dudes are decked out in standard Western mufti; coat or vest, gun belt, some manner of neckcloth, etc., and all seem to be reacting to some form of bother. For Tarnished Star it could be off-screen or that horse-bound posse in the back, conveniently headed in the opposite direction. It's hard to tell who's the bigger dick just from the cover of Bullet Barricade, but the demise of the dandy in front is still pretty graphic for a book published in the mid-1950s. The order of the day for Valley Of Violent Men, however, is beefcake, apparently; the studmuffin on the cover has shed his headgear to better show off his rakish locks, his neckerchief is tugged roguishly to one side, and his stance against the county jail bars is almost girly in its tilt.
 
Sometimes you come across panoramic cover art that stretched around the spine and across the back; subtly emulating the yawning stretches of open range where so many of these adventures of lawmen and the lawless were set against. The Elkhorn Feud is one of them, and laying out the poor lead-filled dope on the ground like he is allows for a minor reveal for the browser; on just the front cover, only the downed man's legs are visible, so if you had this book in your hand you'd naturally flip it over to see if the carnage continues, because out eyes seek out the edges of these things like puzzle pieces. And sure enough, the sucker's face-down in his own platelets.
Serials, canonical and otherwise, are just as plentiful when documenting the fake history of the Old American West as in other literary time zones. Here's the backstory for Larry & Streak, as reprinted on the back cover of each of their exploits:
"There was no time for introductions the day that Larry Vance and Streak Everett met. Some sidewinder had slandered Texans, and angry fists lashed out for vengeance. But, when the dust cleared, two men towered above the rubble at their feet. Two Lone Star Hellions, destined to ride together, to brawl and battle and pour hot lead against the worst of the West."    Since the infrastructure of the Old West allows for a little poetic license when it comes to the gray areas of the law, writers often had the freedom of characterizing their protagonists as lovable rogues, vigilantes with hearts of gold, or just rambling troubleshooters wandering from one dink boomtown to another, leveling the playing field of the frontier as they went. Larry and Streak were only one of many teams like this, with equally silly nicknames, but also with matching evocative artwork. The use of brown and blue is especially striking when looking between Wheels Out Of Jericho and Big Day At Blue Creek, and the dominant red of Amarillo Ridge belies the Nero Wolfe-style caper inside. Fun fact: in addition to writing over 700 books before he died, most of them Westerns, author Marshall McCoy, a.k.a. Leonard Meares, was Australian, where they also have cowboys. Another queer quirk you notice when you thumb through handfuls of these covers looking for the standouts is the body language of the ubiquitous pistol. In a number of cases, the trend seems to be that a gun is being used for defense if it's pointed to the right, (as with Tarnished Star and Valley Of Violent Men above) and intended for predisposed violence if it's angled to the left. (as evidenced by the body counts on the covers of Bullet Barricade and The Elkhorn Feud) Just goes to show that violence sells just as many books or magazines or movies as sex does; you just need to know who your audience is. ⎋
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You're leaving only to arrive again. You're leaping off the precipice, only to find that it's just the far end of a Möbius strip. You're standing in water up to your tits without getting your hair wet.
You're a creation rebel, an off-road chippie with a trunk full of crunk, a dishwater-blonde cruise missile with jellystone eyes. You go where sparrows dare, you drink the iodine-treated Kool-Aid, you pave the way with crushed ginger snaps and oyster crackers. You're a shining star, yesh you are.
Yesh, yesh, y'all.
Now close your eyes, close your blue and greens, close your green and grays, close your ruby and pearls. Shush now, no more tears, no more fears, no more mad worlds. Look away, listen close, listen now:
Now fly, you beautiful fool. For the old world has fallen away, and its rules no longer apply to you. Fly now, flow forwards, and be forever fierce.
We are already missing you.
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