The Diamond Island

I pick up the pen and do the picture mentioned in the previous post.  Think of it as pulling away the cobwebs, prying loose the boards, and digging out the sludge.  Yuck, this is gross.  There’s a lot of butt-gut material here.

Thoroughly nastified by the experience, creaking walls making me nervous the whole structure is going to come down any moment, I make my way down into the foundations.  Before I know it, I’m crawling around in the mud for who knows what.

That’s when I find the one-woman flying saucer in the crud.  I scrape away the detritus and uncover the saucer bit by bit.  It’s a nameless, inexplicable thing not unlike a chocolate éclair.  The ship is as light as a feather.  It looks like it should weigh about a two thousand pounds, but I lift it out of the gunk and onto the floorboards like I would pick up a plastic, hand-sized toy.

The saucer opens, and I understand this is because I’ve been exposed to UFO Girl’s cooties.  I am contaminated correctly.  I scoot myself inside and the marvelous contraption closes around me like a puzzle.  The fuel meter reads full.  I touch the diode with my hand and the fiery spirit inside sneezes out of me in an instant.  I watch the dial go down to zero.

EMPTY POWER RESTORED.

I turn on the radio diode, and hear all sorts of rockin’ tunes that imprint themselves on my reptile baseline.  I realize I’m taking this all in calmly so I don’t poop my pants.  I’m only using the most primitive of functions on this saucer.  Good luck on the intermediate stuff.

The saucer ejects me faster than Bond shooting out a Goldfinger agent from his Aston Martin.  I never thought that would ever happen to me!  There’s a terrific knocking at the doors.  I scramble up the stairs and answer the knocking.  The doors open easily.

UFO Girl is there.  She’s been waiting for me too.  Behind her is a huge throng of life-no-life-unlife forms assembled, looking for shelter.  I remember a previous vision and decide it’s time to let ’em all in.

Before I know it, the place is hopping like mad with more strange activity in my head than I know what to do with.

In her inexplicable way, UFO Girl thanks me for finding her saucer.  She’s amazed I gassed down the tank without getting myself totally killed.  Her material form has been stuck on this savage planet for too long.  It was driving her crazy.  She beeps and twirts, and the saucer comes hoverin’ out of the basement to land beside her.

UFO Girl boards the flying saucer and gets ready to depart.  She says I should really appreciate that Dark Goddess, because she’s one in a million.  Knows how to treat an alien lunatic on a transubstantiation binge.

I’m like, wait, what about that trip on your saucer earlier?  She raspberries that one.  It was all an illusion using advanced technology on my ape’s brain.  Humans think they’re so smart.  She’s glad she met a real moron finally.

Hey!

I suddenly realize I’m in for another goodbye.  UFO Girl is taking off, and she’s not coming back to this neck of the woods for a million years.  Something about her subscription to lifeform events.  I really like UFO Girl.  She’s so weird!  I just got to know her and now voom.

VOOM.

No last words.  That isn’t her style.  I’m spinning out of control.  Zero for two, and now that’s it.  I think about my crazy friend Alexi, and his words comfort me: “No worries, just fun.”  My whacky-wise Aquarian buddy, I think those words are truth.  I’m going to let the mystery of UFO Girl be.

The End?

Outside, there’s a crazy party of activity going on.  Every conceivable creature is out here.  There are monsters, spirits, really weird beings, strangers, aliens, victims, and mad scientists.  I haven’t the wherewithal to deal with that right this moment.  One thing at a time.

Naturally, I walk through the door and into the unknown.  The doors creak closed behind me.  Trapped like a rat!  My Mirage has been waiting for me to reach this point in our dialogue.  I thought I was dealing with my shadow, and perhaps I am a little.  Now, I’m not so sure.  He’s the dark king of the underworld waiting for me to arrive, and it’s turning me for a loop how this has turned out.

I’m awake and now the nightmare must end.  The clarion calls of the dawn are calling me so very fudging hard.  The night in the haunted house is over, in the deep me of me.  My Mirage is there before me in this large, empty house with nothing in it but him.  He is ready for this moment, preparing for it for years.

I can hardly believe how empty the place is.  It’s not what I expected at all.  Zippo.  The whole place looks ready to crumble.  He tells me things I can hardly hear because there’s this din in my mind’s ear.  I liked having a Mirage that was scary and cool.  He reassures me and says this is how it happens.  One day you’re done, and you have to let go.

I’m told everything has been accounted for, and transferred to me for the duration (of what?).  Okay, whatever.  So what do I do now?  How do I slay myself?

He says I slew him years ago.  This is only a recording.  His last request is that I draw a picture and reflect fondly on him now and then.  I’ve been afraid of myself, talking to myself all along.  It was all a shadow of the imagination that has passed in the night.  Oh god how I miss him already, a hole in my heart the size of a person who no longer is.

Good Lord, Count Gore De Vol is a prophet.  The end of Captain 20’s ship, the last night party of Creature Feature.  Channel 20 is canceled all over again, and now it’s just me, with no super creature horror filler hour anymore.  I’ve got to be my own horror host from now on; no one will do it for me.

I understand.  I’ve heard those words before from someone else.  “I am not coming back.  It’s up to you now.”

That’s when I notice the pen on the floor.  There’s the door to the basement, courtesy of revelations from my old friend Craig, who helped me interpret a dream once.  All I got to do is pry the boards loose and start digging through the stale poop.

But first, that picture.  Rest in peace, hero.

Possible spoilers for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, so ahroo!

Standing before the doors to the haunted house, My Mirage whispers to myself.  “Before you can be granted admittance, you must uncover the identity of the wicked magician.”

I think about what kind of items I might need should I manage to get inside.  The haunted house could be hazardous!

The goddess Athena once said to me in a dream, “You must take up a sword.”  I thought that was preposterous, since I don’t do swords.  A year later, in a waking dream, the unknowable explained to me she meant a pen.  I was just too dense to understand her.

I’ve been writing and drawing all my life, but I begin to get it, faintly.  I need to take up the pen and write and draw with intent.  I must take action. It is no longer enough for me to do it unconsciously.  I have been doing it more consciously the last two years.  However, I need to know this as well as do it with intention.

I try to decipher the symbolism behind the slapstick, the torch, the wand.  I’m carrying not so much a stick as a feminine spirit lent to me by the Dark Goddess.  I’m performing not so much the part of Punch as a generic dum-dum on a ridiculous adventure.

While thinking about the past, Xtine pulls free another stone to reveal more me (without consciously realizing it).  In a way, in another time and place, I had a puffed up image of myself as the Grand Magician.  I thought I knew what I was doing.  Much as Koura the wicked magician in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Alas, as Xtine points out this guy is so way not eating with both hands.

I wonder about the man in black who follows Koura around.  We are meant to think of him as the sensible apprentice to Koura.  He certainly knows what is what.  “If you continue on this way master, you will die.”  Then I think of the oracle’s words about an evil son and wonder who the oracle is talking about – Koura or the “apprentice?”  We are supposed to think Koura, of course, but when you are on a ridiculous adventure, layered meanings can spring from anywhere.

I’m thinking about an old Batman and Robin comic, where they fight Benedict Arnold.  The old traitor comes back from the dead to break the soul of the country by defeating two of its greatest heroes.  A weird dude follows him around the whole time, granting Benedict Arnold powers.  Only at the end when the traitor is defeated does the weird dude reveal himself to be Old Scratch (the Devil).

So is that “apprentice” dude really an ordinary guy hoping to advance himself by serving the bad guy, or is he symbolic of the possession of Koura by an evil force?  Thinking about it, I decide that on a symbolic level he must represent what is left of Koura’s conscience.  He is always the “sane” bad guy, trying to get Koura to be more reasonable, more down to earth.

It is telling that the apprentice is ordered away near the end of the film – Koura has the upper hand (or so he believes) and he no longer needs his “conscience” to keep him alive – indeed, soon after he goes off on his own, Koura starts to die rapidly as the dark magics finally catch up with him!

But me?  No way, not no how.  Couldn’t happen to me!  Like Koura, I thought I was getting the forces of the world to move at my whim.  Kali gettin’ down for me?  Har!  That’s Shiva, dumb-butt, and your face is about to be used as reactor shielding.

Then I get it.  Koura was the sultan (read: king).  He “killed the sultan” (who always seems to be referred to in a present sense, as if he were still alive somehow), in the sense that he killed himself with his pursuit of dark magic.  Much as Saruman in Lord of the Rings.  The desire for knowledge can lead too far.  Always remember to practice don’t-know-mind!

SNACK!

Koura lived in the castle next to the city because he was the king who had gone bad. The fiery accident that burned the good vizier (read:  the apprentice king) happened during Koura’s fall from grace as the true king.

This is a blow to me.  I always wondered why “the demons of darkness” (read: the forces of nature) moved to Koura’s command.  That’s because he was still manifesting the king energy, even though it was for wicked purposes.

Thanks to Xtine, I realize now how little grasp Koura has on reality.  Before, I thought he was just some power monger meddling and paying the price to accomplish his evil goals.  But whoa, that’s just what he wants people to think.  Total illusion pose for the crowd.  In truth, he is out to lunch big time. All lines are busy, no groove, don’t play.  Not even on the same page.

That’s incredibly tragic.  His quest then becomes not a mad scramble for power, but a compelling desire to reach the Fountain of Destiny and recover what was lost. He “obtains”, to use his own phrase, but only two out of three – the energy of youth and a shield of darkness.  The crown of ultimate riches goes to someone else.  You can never return to what you once were.

Koura isn’t thinking of the people of his kingdom, or his poor vizier’s suffering.  He’s thinking of himself and not in a good way.  Sinbad, who represents the transcendent function (he says, “I am the most foolhardy”), comes along to restore the balance and heal the wounds of the earth.  He kills Koura in the fountain, and it is only then that the third golden tablet reveals the crown.  The king is dead, long live the king.

A phrase comes back to me.  “The hero who does not crucify himself today becomes the villain of tomorrow.”  I’ve also read that the hero is an immature energy function, that it has a purpose (to take action against the stagnation of life) and once that purpose is fulfilled, the hero must “die” and be reborn as a responsible adult.

I think that must have been what I didn’t do a long while ago.  Part of me has been skulking about like a ghost in dark moors and drinking of wretched waters.  Joseph Campbell once said, “And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.”  The four corners fall into place.

I grow afraid.  My Mirage is waiting for me in the haunted house.  The last thing I want to do is dispatch the vampire, defeat the villain, neutralize the monster.  It’s the very worst thing in the world to slay yourself.  Psychologically or otherwise.

The doors to the house open.  I’m expected.

My 1.2 Kohinoor Rapidograph has been giving me the most awful of times this last week. No matter how much I soaked it, the inner mechanism wouldn’t do the magic click. Jammed with dry ink. It’s the largest line in my collection, and absolutely essential at getting thick, dark lines. My 0.8 and 0.6 were a little stuck, but I eventually managed to get them to make the magic click.

But man, my 1.2 was just breaking my heart. The ink crumbs started coming out yesterday, and I was able to shake the others loose. Huge flakes, small grains, and even thick lines of ink like pencil lead came out in the wash. Then all of a sudden, clickity clickity. Oh, music to my ears.

That’s the lot. I’m ready to start inking again. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Sakura Gelly Roll pens. I’ll be using them on the Holiday Cards to excellent effect over the next few days. But they can’t handle the posterboard or thick sheets of paper I like to use, and they don’t hold the watercolors well at all.

The Incorrigible Witch lent me two of her fabulous artistic creations. I feel like Baba Yaga lent me two of her spellbooks, just for laughs. Who knows what I’ll come away with by studying them. Meditating on context and illuminations right out of the human pit of existence? Who can tell, but I’m excited.

UFO Girl, with her strange ways, tricked me into signing up for one of those privacy-invading, application overloading, social network sites. All of a sudden, life form readings from out of the past start swarming around me. A thousand stories come flooding back to me from the deep, dark depths where I had buried them long ago before I went mad.

Talk about ghosts, and digging up graves to see what’s moldering inside—after all these years. Setting free spirits imprisoned by the past?

My friend Xtine came back into my life from another galaxy, where she had been collecting intergalactic buddha samples for the delight, horror and education of the general public. Her appearance has pried loose stones from a sepulture I’d thought long buried. It’s as if the dead are dancing out of their graves and I’m in my coffin asleep, trapped, lifeless.

I believe she’s another message, another mirror, shouting at my being with the serious credibility of an angelic trumpet. Judgement Day. Awaken. The angel is blowing the horn with the announcement power of a new life, a new calling.

I try to curl over on my side, go back to sleep. But it’s no use. I mean, It’s been written in the script of my name that one day I would be called like this, I knew it. For decades. But I just didn’t get it, and now I’m starting to realize that.

The other people weren’t dead either. I only felt disconnected. The fierce passion and connection to life they’ve made me feel hasn’t gone away. It lay dormant. Now Xtine’s prying loose stones, and the light of the stars and moon are pouring in like gangbusters. I’m fooling myself if I think I can escape.

Not everything about my old friends is what I like. Some of them surprise me with what they’ve been through, the amazing adventures they’ve had. Others are the same as they ever were, maybe a little more grizzled around the edges. It’s all good. What shocks me though, is how much feeling I have for them, it overwhelms me. The light shining behind them is beyond my comprehension.

Then I start mixing in the new friends. My current life, and boy does that stir the pot. I had dreams about this. I have piles of papers with clues about it. But the day comes and you just aren’t prepared. The bodies leaping up out of the graves, the ghosts floating and flying about, that’s me. The reconnection is another message staring me in the face. People are in my life again, reminding me of the parts of me I’d forgotten. I wasn’t dead, but I haven’t exactly been alive either.

My spirit’s been traveling a long labyrinth back to myself, and now there’s a great din and a call to action. I rise up out of my coffin and push aside the stones to look around.

I’m at the haunted house, and everybody’s in the place.

Voulant: paul’s blog….
Voulant: wow
Liephus: dude…
Voulant: i’m still back in september
Voulant: but its insane
Liephus: and it’s all freakin’ UFO Girl
Voulant: i mean
Voulant: yes
Voulant: i seriously think he’s crazy
Voulant: or will be
Voulant: “I had a dream two weeks ago, where I was trying to keep my mirage from waking up. He was in a coffin, and I was with a bunch of people, trying to convince them to help me before it was too late. I was chopping my mirage’s limbs off with an axe, afraid he would wake up and we’d all be jacked. His eyes were open and looking at me letting me know he knew what I was doing. Perhaps what I was doing was futile.”
Liephus: 🙂
Voulant: pauls blog reminds me of the writings Brad Pitt and Ed Norton found in the basement of the dilapidated house in the movie ‘Fight Club’
Liephus: hmm… been years since I’ve seen that movie
Voulant: ah
Voulant: ok
Voulant: its one of my favs
Liephus: it is awesome, just haven’t watched it in a long time
Liephus: November in Paul’s blog is all UFO Girl and random 70s stuff
Voulant: ok
Voulant: i’m still in sept
Voulant: so i have a ways to go
Liephus: with the occassional understandable post
Voulant: haha
Voulant: ‘occasional’
Voulant: haha
Voulant: paul… wow
Liephus: “I get back from my stupid search for the alien critter, and I receive the Mr. Megaphone treatment from UFO Girl. She just made all that stuff up. The big hoot was watching me blunder around in an area of high psychic radioactivity, with malfunctioning killer robots wandering around ready to smash skulls. The excitement of wondering whether I would fall down go boom or get opened like a can of tuna was a blast for her.”
Voulant: WHAT DOES IT MEAN!!!!!?!?!?!?!???!!!!!!!!!!?
Liephus: the funny part about that… it the BEGINNING of the post
Liephus: no explanation whatsoever
Voulant: oh dear
Voulant: haha
Liephus: I can’t wait for his book to come out! 😉
Liephus: we’ll be clueless 5 pages in
Voulant: completely lost
Liephus: I can imagine the IM conversations about it now
Liephus: “Who or what is the main character?”
Voulant: “are they fighting monsters, or aliens, or demons, or just imagining everything?”
Liephus: “Does this guy really have wheels for feet?”
Voulant: “ok.. so is the talking rock -really- a character?”
Liephus: “So… did the good guys win? Actually, who are the good guys?”
Voulant: back to teh blog
Voulant: “I’m driving to the parental unit’s batcave with K, and while we are waiting at the stoplight, we hear bagpipes. I search in vain for the source. It’s coming from the woods, and it sounds like some kind of battle march. Well crumbs that about sums up the times, doesn’t it?”
Voulant: WTF!
Liephus: It made sense, up until “about sums up the times”
Voulant: right
Voulant: exactly!
Voulant: i can see everything else happening
Voulant: until paul imparts upon us what he is thinking
Voulant: then it just goes to s**t
Liephus: rofl
Voulant: haha
Voulant: just sayin man
Voulant: i try to make sense of this crap
Liephus: sometimes you just gotta say to yourself, “Ok, whatever… next post.”
Liephus: sometimes being about 4/5 posts
Voulant: 85%
Voulant: haha
Liephus: maybe his posts are just madlibs that he does
Voulant: borrowing HEAVILY from fantasy and science fiction for nouns and adjectives
Voulant: “____ _____ went to the _____ for some _____ ”
Voulant: Voulant would say…
Voulant: “My friends went to the supermarket for some beer”
Voulant: Paul would say…
Voulant: “Radioactive space slugs went to the starbase in Sector 2.2 for some plutonic mental recharge nuggets”
Voulant: coming up with that gave me a headache
Liephus: lol

I give thanks for my friends on this day, because they know the DEAL.

This weekend I gathered together my disparate containers of tools and spread them out before me.  I meditated on what was before me and considered how little I’ve paid attention to my instruments of illustration.  In my mind, I imagined a fantasy of tearing down the old house and pulling out all the old roots.  I experienced feelings akin to shattering the foundations with TNT while my heart shook from the destruction.  The courage to go through with this comes from seeing other artists doing their work.  Their magnificent work strengthens my resolve.  My inside soundtrack keeps repeating, “Everybody is in the place, everybody is in the place.”

I removed all the junk or tools that no longer serve my purpose.  I threw out some of it.  Others I put away.  All my rubber stamps will have to go in a box with my sticker-stash and mail envelope magic materials.  That project I’ll be returning to.  It’s still forming.  I looked at how low my watercolor and colored pencil collection had gotten.  My marker collection is a joke, I haven’t been serious for twenty years.  The Kohinoor pens have seen better days, and now they’re all jammed with dried ink.  Most of my brushes haven’t been cleaned or checked in years.  My poster board and paper assortment is sub-par and all over the place.  I hardly know what I have.

If I look at myself honestly, this part of my skill is in bad shape.  I’ve been coasting, getting by with abilities from a place in my life that expired a long time ago.  I sit down and get to work.  I make a list of things I need to get.  The pens receive a revivifying soak and creak back to life again, slowly, with much coaxing.  The paper and board get organized, and I cut pieces down or arrange them according to where I think my need is pointing.  My toolbox, which is the nexus of what I use when it’s time for heavy duty work, gets a makeover.  New good luck charms end up in the holding tray.  I’m not riding by the skin of my teeth anymore.  I mean business, the new organization satisfies for now.

K and I head to the Michaels store.  She finds a number of pleasant, cheap goodies to advance her need to be creative.  I find most everything I’m looking for, but it’s hard work.  I don’t have immediate access to a good starbase with everything like I used to.  That’s okay, I’ll make do until I can “plus” my collection forward to where I want to be.  The critical pencils I need I find.  It’s good to have a fresh set of Verthins between the fingers again.  I heat my electric sharpener up so much getting them all ready, I have to take a break.  Things are heating up psychologically I think, and I laugh.  My friends, the people who support and encourage me are at my back in a way I can’t describe.  The new stuff gets put in the toolbox along with the still-relevant old stuff.  I feel like reinforcements are here.  Erasers, fine and heavy blades to cut and scrape the material, and a new brush for heavy saturation.

I get down to working on my cover design, doing preliminary sketches and filling them in.  I cut a line of boards and set them up for several attack runs at drawing practice, all to the measurements I’ll be needing.  I paint more messages from the unconscious and make adjustments to several works-in-progress.  It’s all tightly organized, and I move from one dance to the next, switching tools back and forth.  Before I know it, the old gun-shy jitters are breaking up and turning fluid.  Lots more work to do, and my skill wakes like it’s been in a coma.  The therapy will be tremendous, but I surprise myself as a flourish of line or perspective shines through the cracks.

Something a friend told me back in 1996 comes out of the depths of time to my memory.  “How’s your comic doing?”  I mouth the words to myself, “Nowhere, it’s dead.”  Her response:  “Dreams don’t die.”  Which also happens to be the title of a movie I saw once, about a graffiti artist who leaves the streets behind to become a successful graphic artist by the skin of his teeth.

Another friend says a week ago in so many words, “Hey, what’s that creaking sound?”  I’m reminded of a line from Fruits Basket – “What’s that sound?  It’s the sound of something about to break.”  In Fruits Basket the line refers to a curse and a thousand years of misery coming to an end for real, because it’s already been over for years.  My friend points (in her special way of conversation) to a mailbox inside my psyche filled to bursting with letters, the same message over and over again.

“What’s the use?” I say to myself.  “I wasn’t…worthy.  And I don’t care much for Harry Potter anyway.”  Then the mailbox bursts, and I’m swimming in letters that all say the same thing:  “Try again.”  Another song cues in my inner soundtrack from The Verve:  “You can do anything you want to, all you gotta do is try.”

So yeah 1996 friend.  I was the one that was nowhere, dead asleep from a nightmare that never seemed to end.  I’m waking up and finding out the comic was just a part of what I’m supposed to do.  I didn’t have enough vision yet to see that.

UFO Girl whispers into my inner listening:  Soon you’ll be ready to walk in the center of the saucer.

Flash back to my recent trip to Michaels with K.  The check-out woman at Michaels looks at the materials I’m getting, many of which are a buck.  She makes a comment about how I’m buying everything on the dollar menu.  I’m floored, because she’s referencing my current short duration personal savior.  That guy takes something small and makes it into a story filled with fun.  Yeah, I’m trying to be creative and filled with joy about something that’s my personal insight.  We chat for a while, while K chuckles to herself.  I say I wish I was that creative.  The woman runs my pencil refreshment pack through the checker, looks at them, and says, “You are.”

The external encounter is like I’m getting another flood of letters.  Mirrors and mirrors and mirrors again in my life, and I can hardly stand the shock to my small vision of who I am.  My fear of being struck down for growing to fill the form I inhabit roars loud and hard like a song.

UFO Girl whispers again into my inner listening:  Soon your music quest will find your soundtrack.

I’m listening and readying my instruments for writing and drawing.

I would say living in a haunted house and unable to leave counts as being “up a tree”.  The adventure clues seem to point to a need to go further than ‘spending a night in a haunted house’.  It’s almost like a mystery play, with the experience akin to spending a night in the woods to prove your readiness to become an adult.

But to go beyond the transformative journey implies something else.  I’m thinking of a role as a mediator between the two worlds.  I’m feeling there’s more to it than that.  There isn’t just the shaman or the chief who tells the tribe how to live in harmony with the supernatural.  There’s the fighter who takes decisive action, and the artist who manifests joy.

And there is the idiot who doesn’t belong anywhere.  Who roams to and fro as they please.  Many times the fool is a victim, or a stranger who is not appreciated or wanted.  The dunderhead makes mistakes and messes up despite the best of intentions.

Out of nowhere, I think of Punch.  The beak-nosed, hunchbacked, slapstick fellow from Punch and Judy shows.  I start looking up this character, and it’s as if I’m discovering a part of myself that has been sitting in an attic waiting for me.

For those not in the know, Punch is a character in a puppet show that originated (as far as is known) in Italy, took root in England and became an institution, and was very popular in the states at one time.  The show goes up and down in popularity and goes through changes according to the times.

The show consists of a puppeteer who stands inside a tall, portable, makeshift stage.  The puppeteer manipulates the puppets to tell various aspects of Punch’s story while soliciting responses from the audience.  The show is performed for both kids and adults, with the tone of the show depending on the mood of the puppeteer and the audience.

The puppeteer, called a “professor”, uses a secret technique to give Punch a distinct voice.  Punch is a violent, loathsome fellow who goes about smacking the other characters of the show on the head with a big stick.  Usually to the line of “that’s the way you do it.”  The various characters can include:

• Judy:  Punch’s wife.  Thus, the show is called “Punch and Judy”.
• The Baby:  Punch’s infant with Judy.
• The Policeman:  Tries to arrest Punch for his crimes.
• The Alligator:  Tries to eat Punch.
• Pretty Polly:  Attractive woman Punch tries to get on with.
• The Ghost:  Tries to scare Punch.
• The Doctor:  Tries to cure Punch of his ills.
• The Hangman:  Tries to hang Punch for his crimes.
• The Devil:  Tries to make Punch pay for his crimes.

The show can be quite vulgar, and it can also be goofy fun, depending on how the professor plays it.  I’ve never been one for puppets, but the whole world of Punch seems so darn interesting, it draws me in with the temptation to take it up for myself.

The slapstick (a stick that makes a slap sound when it hits someone) Punch uses to do the other characters in comes forward in my mind.  That must be the arcane stick I was seeing earlier.  There are some schools of thought that Punch is descended from a mystery play from ancient times, and that his story represents moral lessons and catharsis of an incredibly civilized kind.  So it makes sense that the Hek-mail was trying to get that across in a mystical, magical sort of way.

In a psychic sense, the slapstick must be the tool I’ll need to help the monsters.  And it might be what I need to delve into the haunted house.  Of course, it’s Mr. Punch’s slapstick and not mine, and coaxing him into letting me borrow it might prove interesting.  Well, as long as the audience gets a laugh out of it, I suppose it’s all good.

This could get real weird.

No luck trying to unlock the sealed envelope at the base of my brain stem.  So I contemplate how the crummy CDs I mentioned earlier have turned out to be total busts.  4 CDs and not one good song for me.  I know it’s a clue, but if I got nothing out of it, then what?

Except there’s one song I remember hearing had a funky beat.  Space Woman by Charlie, which I listen to again.  This time, it stands out.

I’m a spacer woman, don’t you worry ’bout me
I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to love you

Whoa, that’s got to be from UFO Girl for sure.  Turns out the song is from 1983, and is called “Spacer Woman”.  It was a popular tune in Italian Discos.  Weird.  I wonder why UFO Girl has changed her tune, and if the lyrics are meant for me, or my Mirage.  Then again, it could be one of those “We come in peace, shoot to kill, shoot to kill” things.  I guess I’ll have to go and find out!

Then I run into She music by way of a livejournal buddy.  I get my hands on several downloadable albums of electronica music galore, and it’s all good.  Well crumbs, looks like UFO Girl is hooking me up after all with the sweet life support tunes.  I was getting worried there.  A kernel of Royal Road Guidance in the malefic.

I get the feeling that UFO Girl can help with the Hekate Headquarters mail, and that I ought to let my Mirage know of her lyrics.  I figure writing a message and leaving it downstairs in the basement will probably work, except I think my Mirage has got me under batwing surveillance now like nobody’s business, just like that boy in Karin the vampire.

That probably means UFO Girl’s got my place bugged with high tech gadgets, or heck she probably has my coordinates memorized and she can dial a direct sensor reading whenever she feels like.  Soon as I think of that, she comes out over a hidden Mr. Megaphone loudspeaker and tells me she’ll decode my Hek-mail if I’ll run an errand for her.

Sheesh, everybody wants something!

I get the feeling if I don’t my music quest will run into a long string of bad no-hits.  At the very least she’ll turn my draft cider into Skid Mark Hooch, and that stuff’s only fit for Plan 9 automatons.

My skull’s innards get a flash image of a bionic alien critter with steel coil springs for legs and a tail, a pincer for a mouth, and an appetite for bamboo shoots.  Apparently, this critter escaped the saucer again, and I have to find it before it attaches its wheel to a human being and starts manufacturing intelligent cotton balls.  The critter’s name is Nine, and while he’s been de-venomed and immunized against human stupidity, his 5715 interface has yet to be adjusted to “neutral”, thus the threat of cotton ball civilization.

Alien critters get lost on this planet all the time.

I drive over to the neighborhood she believes the critter probably landed, something about really digging the vibes there.  It’s chilly, windy, and dark, with shady characters walking around.  I walk up and down the paths, crunching leaves underfoot.  At one point I nearly twist my ankle in the dark. I have no luck finding Nine, and am forced to return to my car in defeat.

Crumbs, I’m zero for two with these weird imaginary characters.

The superstructure and stress points are all at nominal levels, the crew is happy, and the ship power is fully operational.  Even the Kittee Patrol is at full health.  At the back of my primary cell awareness, though, something is brewing and it smells like trouble.  My brain sensors have been getting a lot of random readings in the local systems.  The subconscious radio is picking up increased activity as well.

I feel guilty and out of sorts, because being a secret party pooper is no fun.  The last thing I need right now is a mood, but then perhaps I’m getting a message that I haven’t quite figured out yet.  Something heavy hangs in the air I’m breathing, as if some gigantic catastrophe were about to erupt from the depths and rip the heads off anyone who isn’t bowing low enough.

An image enters my mind of a selfish mindset as large as the world, wearing a dirty sheet over its shrunken head as it plays recklessly with forces beyond mortal command.  This psychic infection is completely disassociated from the external world, and uninterested in any internal world not based on a fearful, immature image of life.  Any moment this childish thinking will cause a disaster and take everyone it can with it.

Just what I need, a nameless dread giving me the shivers.  I tell the starship crew to hyperport me to the nearest sensor reading that matches the stats we have for the nameless dread.  I’m going to have to take a direct astral reading at point blank range to make anything of this new development.

Zap.  Switching to uncensored habitat mode.

Picking up mass mockery of decent people.  Dirty tricks being performed on valuable prophets.  Mass migration of sanity to folly with imminent beat down masked by phony baloney.  Trusted guardians bearing false seal of approval showing true colors as they maim and loot.  Increase in victim threshold rising to off the scope whir beep.  Massive buyout of worthless junk on unimaginable scale as shutdown systems of life support continue, warning, warning, fuel for fake bribery burnout at critical levels.  All systems on alert for least size resistoids at any cost must destroy.  Reality override, going eegah oh no whoop whoop, have a bite of collapsoid stone age mind spoilage eeyew brrrrrr. Doom alert, doom alert, drinking down mosquito disease cocktail made with hot sauce.  Static, static, shutdown, change channel.

Hello and welcome to the fake friend show…click.  Next channel.

Emergency transmission begins now.  Get off the planet immediately.  All bioplastoids are guaranteed a transfer station at the non-time coordinates listed on your drinking bracelet.  If you are cobalt based, you will need an extraction procedure before liftoff.  Absorb all relevant recordings for procedure at your nearest pyroclastic stability.  All other motility existences must evacuate immediately.  Transmission for non-temporal beings begins now.  Beerrrpabrpbeeprprpbeep…click.  No channel.

Random Gooberz:  “Hey, what are you doing here?”

Me:  “I live here!”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Random Gooberz:  “You’re supposed to be in scene seventy-nine.”

Me:  “I thought sixty nine was a better scene to be in.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Random Gooberz:  “I’ve heard of choose your own adventure, but this is ridiculous.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

Me:  “Just wait until the juicy parts.”

HOLDS UP COVER OF BOOK SO AUDIENCE CAN SEE

Random Goober:  “There are no juicy parts in that one.  You bought the wrong volume, you idiot!”

Me:  “Boy is my face red.”

CANNED LAUGHTER

…click.  More channels.  Click click click.  Switching to dial mode…clack.

Finally, someone with half a brain.  Don’t stand there like you need to adjust.  All of us down here in Hekate Headquarters know your quirks.  Here’s the deal.  We need a living person to do some stuff for us down here, or there’s going to be no Charlie Brown Xmas.  Get ready, we’re going to beam you.

END TRANSMISSION OTHER

The scene here is absolutely unbelievable, average news anchor.  People coming out of the woodwork and firing shots, throwing toilet paper, shouting invectives.  Whatever they can at the 400 foot tall apparition smashing downtown wherever.  I don’t need to tell you the authorities are helpless before this monstrosity, and yet here we have a spontaneous reaction from the public, doing serious hit point damage to what must be the most colossal blunder people have ever made.

Number nine, number nine, number nine.

“Get back to where you once belonged.”

Zid.  Closing uncensored habitat mode.

Hey, I got Hek-mail.

The latest incarnation of the Halloweenie came and went, Hekate-yeah!  It looks like this last Celtic New Year was so bone-jellying, even the Incorrigible Witch was out of town on random adventure.  I can’t blame her, it’s been a year of staring at the rotten face of Medusa and kissing the gorgon’s revolting mouth on the bony lips.  I’d much rather have pizza…and margarita shooters!

My costume didn’t come together as I planned at all.  Couldn’t get all my scattered pieces whole for Goth Boy, so I had to improvise with a Melting Face attempt from Make-up Monsters.  The cotton balls didn’t stick as planned, and the bean-corn syrup-flour-water mix was more gooey than I anticipated.  I felt like my costume, my pumpkin carving, and my potluck all stunk.  My Mirage was laughing at my feeble attempts the whole time.  I’m such a noob.

One interesting thing is that the face mixture does dry after a while.  You get lots of drippy tendrils and nasty looking textures.  After two hours, the dry parts begin cracking and shrinking, forming cool textures.  Some areas crack, and ooze as wet mixture bursts forth from not-dried pockets to make new formations.  My mask tightened and during the potluck started to crumble.  I couldn’t eat very well, because my face was held in place.  A guy sitting next to me said, “You look like the lizard king.”

As Karin the vampire would say, “Having your face fall off is so embarrassing!”

I finally went to the restroom and proceeded to peel my mask off.  Then it hit me – on the end of the year I’m shedding my old green skin for the fresh, soft skin underneath.  I thought of Medusa, and how much I self-identify with the feelings her story draws out of me.  My old life turned to stone and crumbling behind me, tearing down the old house to the foundations and building something new.

My Mirage snickering behind me.  Maybe a stupid failure of a costume serves a purpose after all.