The Soundtrack to the Magical Senior Prom I Never Had

Enslaved, Below the Lights.

It would have been a magical evening, my black metal prom night. Impossible, yes. My actual senior prom was years before black metal. Euronymous was still very much alive, and playing some memorable gigs, when I visited that hotel lobby with my actual prom date, decked out in a pink puffy prom dress and makeup that made her look like a desperate twelve dollar hooker.

No, this is not that prom. This is black metal prom night. In the burned out church, lit by torches, they arrive in singlets, twos, and clusters of twelve or more. Some of them wear homemade chainmail armor and carry broadswords, others wear camouglage and carry hardware store axes, but most wear spikes and studded leather, tall boots, and corpsepaint. There is a burning altar. A pyre of logs and dug-up coffins, heaped with church benches, ablaze against the night sky. It is not June. It is January, and it is snowing. Wolves howl. It is not early evening. It is 2AM, and most of these people have been up all night drinking and doing speed. Women in black dresses and corpse paint lead another prom date, a nude albino woman with enormous breasts and prosthetic fangs, by a chain leash and a collar.

There is a punch bowl full of clotted blood. Nobody drinks.

Somebody is passing around a human skull to sign. Girls are kissing it. It has not been cleaned since its demise, sixteen months ago.

The punch bowl is empty. The punch was laced with LSD. By now, people are seeing visions of Odin and Satan riding in the back seat of a limousine together.

None of them dance. There is no dancing to be done tonight.

Torches are passed out to the song "Havenless". It is time to burn the high school to the ground.

A Young Athiest Dreams of the Afterlife

I wrote this my freshman year at UCLA. That must have been 1987, I think. I was eighteen and living in the dorms. Dyksta hall had ten floors and a basement, but ground level was actually the second floor, because like everything in CA, it was on a hill. I had only been an athiest for three or four years, at that point, and I spent a great deal of time that year waiting for the elevator, because I lived on the ninth floor-two things which might explain the subject matter. This was a transcript of a dream that I had the night before, possibly the most intense dream of my life, certainly in the top five. I am transcribing it not having read it for twenty three years or so. I have not changed the words or corrected for my florid and inexperienced writing style, though it pains me to do so (or tendency to contradict myself), it is more interesting the way it is.

This dream basically sums up the Blood on a Space Guitar aesthetic, and belief system, and I wrote it in a dream decades ago.

I awoke to find myself lying in a hospital bed, staring straight up at the ceiling. I felt much better. I actually wanted to get up and go for a walk. Sitting up, I noticed my family staring mournfully, as if I weren't there. I got out of bed. I was about to say something really cynical like "sorry to waste your time by catching cancer, you can go as soon as I'm dead", when I realized how many tubes I must have pulled out by standing up. I turned around and realized why my family was acting so strangely.

There is no sensation exactly like looking down at your own dead body, frozen with a peaceful expression on its face. Lying on its motionless chest was a plain, white envelope with my name "Alan Molumby" typed neatly on the front. I furiously picked up the envelope-annoyed that any medical center would be callous enough to bill a person the moment they died. Upon opening it, I found a curious blue stamp, with 20cents printed on it and a note that apologized for the lack of a reception. It instructed me to keep the stamp because I needed it to get into heaven, which was on the ninth floor. It was signed simply, "God".

The shock of the situation sent me wandering blindly off in some direction-I'm not sure with because I must have walked right through a wall. I was in a crowded hall of the hospital, which was full of busy doctors and patients, who were completely oblivious to the fact that I was standing there completely naked. Ahead of me was a massive bronze elevator. It stood there as if it had been there the whole time-which was obviously not the case because it was located in just about everybody's way. Oblivious of it, everyone just walked through it as if it weren't there.

Feeling a bit awkward, I walked right up to it and pushed the UP button. It was insanely ironic that, even after dying, I still had to suffer the inconvenience of waiting for an elevator.

I ran back to my hospital room and kissed my family goodbye. I was back in time to watch the light for the fourth, the third, and finally the second floor light up as the doors slid open. The inside of the elevator was spacious and ornate. The usual board of buttons listed ten floors and a basement.

I tried to maintain a sense of adventure, reminding myself that, after being confined to a hospital bed for three months, my situation was an improvement of a sort.

I punched the button for the ninth floor wondering "If the everyday world is on the second floor, and heaven is on the ninth, what occupied the other nine floors?" I could feel no noticeable acceleration as the elevator moved, and the ride was unendurably long. I watched the numbers above the door light up until the doors finally slide open at the ninth floor. A light-haired, handsome man dressed in flowing white robes stood at the doorway.

"We're sorry about not having anyone to meet you." He said. "we don't usually make people use the elevator unless we're completely swamped." He continued apologetically. "Oh, have I introduced myself? I'm the demiangel Antigonus-St. Peter is out right now, taking care of some unfinished business. Now, let me have your stamp, and I can show you around for a few minutes." He opened a huge bound book full of hundreds of pages-some were empty, others were covered with stamps. "We have a joke here. When we run out of room in these things, we'll have to start letting people in for free."

"What's on the other floors?" I interrupted.

"Oh, nothing that concerns you" he said, "especially the first floor, that's for people who committed too many sins to be issued a 20cent stamp."

Can I visit a few of them if I get bored here?" I asked.

"Don't be ridiculous." he replied, casually. "Heaven is for eternity, and besides, why would you want to go anywhere else? Those places are not for you."

I snuck a look at the view behind him. A bright blue sky with tufts of white clouds glowed with a radiant light. The tops of Venitian and Gothic buildings broke up the horizon, brilliant orange light from stained glass windows fell on the flowers and trees that moved gently in the sweet breeze. Families laughed and chattered as they walked through the fields. The place looked unbelievably happy, and quite boring.

"These things don't expire, do they?" I asked. "Not unless you spend them by trying to get off somewhere else." He said reproachfully.

"I'll be back in a little while." I said as I examined the buttons in the elevator.

"Suit yourself." He said, patiently, as the doors slid shut.

I had pushed the button for the second floor. Perhaps I could arrange to be reincarnated back home, or at least see what some of the other floors looked like.

On the way down, the elevator stopped on the fourth floor A curly-haired woman in her late forties stepped on-she looked quite upset. I held the door open and took a good long look outside. It looked like the inside of a large old building-well lighted but cluttered with objects. A powerfully built, tall man with a lean bony face stood near the door (Note here..this man was my high school chemistry teacher), motioning with a pair of hands that wore black rubber gloves.

He wore a doctor's smock, and spoke with a deep voice.

"What's this place like-what do you do here?" I asked quizzicly.

"Not much goin' on here, just MOVIN' STUFF TO HEAVEN!" He sounded like a longshoreman. At that moment, he turned to direct a hospital stretcher as it passed down the corridor. Atop it was my own pale, dead body, still wearing the hospital smock. A succession of objects on pallets followed-bathtubs, cans of motor oil, and surreal objects I didn't recognize.

The doors slid shut, leaving me trapped in a metaphysical elevator with a hysterical middle-aged woman who wasn't wearing any clothing, either.

"Where are you from? What's wrong? Where are you going?" I asked hurriedly. "I got off at the wrong damned floor." She said in a weak voice. "The bastards charged me 3cents, so now I can't get into Heaven." I looked into her envelope, it had a single blue 15cent stamp and two blue 1cent stamps inside.

As we rode to the fifth floor, she babbled tediously about her life story. She had an air of weakness and I sensed a certain lack of imagination. The elevator stopped at the second floor. A muscular man in his early twenties stepped aboard. He stared at the two of us.

I was about to step out when he said "You an Indian." "No." I replied calmly. "Then you can't use your stamps there-they only take the green ones-I tried already.: I stared at him blankly. and then stepped back into the elevator. He glanced over his shoulder and hit the first floor button.

"You're taking us to Hell!" Shrieked the woman.

"What the fuck do you care?" He said. "You don't have to get out there, do you?". She looked away.

"Maybe there's a floor you can get into for 17cents." I said.

"I'm not interested, if I can't get into Heaven." She snapped.

The doors slid open at the first floor. A tall, incredibly attractive dark haired woman wearing a ninetenth century military uniform stepped into the elevator. She had bright, dark eyes. A magazine of machine gun bullets hung across her chest.

She took the muscular man by the arm, and said "I've been waiting for you, just hand over the 10cent stamp and I'm sure we'll be able to accommodate you here." She licked her lips seducitvely.

Outside, smoke drifted in sheets. Flames licked buildings of marble and alabaster. A lake of boiling tar could be seen in the distance, with a few legs jutting above it. The man refused to come, saying "I don't have to give it to you."

"You will." She said confidently. "Sooner or later,m everyone gets tired of this stupid elevator, of watching other people go to heaven where they can be happy..." The middle aged woman looked away. "You can't stay on Earth, either-its too frustrating not being able to do anything but watch idly as other people live out their lives. Sooner or later, everyone gives up and comes here-there's nowhere else you can go."

The woman hung about him seductively, her arms around his neck as she rubbed his leg with the inside of his knee. "I'll see you sooner or later she said, kissing him with inside lip."

"What about the other floors?[there have got to be other places to go to-there are eleven floors, including the basement, and nobody seems to be interested in anything but three of them. I felt as if I had interrupted them. The dark woman flashed me a quizzical smile. The midle aged woman and the man both looked at me as if I had just embarrassed them. "That's the unknown." said the middle aged woman "And if it was meant for me, I would have been told to go there by God." She looked angry. "Look what accidentally getting off on the wrong floor cost me-now I guess that means I should go to hell."

Jabbing her envelope at the dark-haired woman, she walked straight out of the elevator.

She looked straight at me and smiled. "Why are you here, kid? You could get into heaven/"

"How do I know that's where I want to be?" I whispered. "There are all kinds of places to go, now that I am dead." I exclaimed, bitterly.

"What's on the tenth floor?" I asked.
"Some old Greek and Norse gods-it costs a lot more than 20cents to get into there though-and you won't want to go to the fourth floor-that's more for objects than people.

"Thanks." I said, smiling at her. I kept trying to remind myself that I was flirting with an archfiend.

"I like you." She declared. "I was like you, once. A long time ago, I wanted to go from floor to floor, not too many people do, you know. For some reason, most people prefer a place like hell to the unknown. Before I came here, I saw most of them." She said. "I collected a book full of hundreds of stamps. I spent most of them getting my position here, but there are still a few pages left back at my home on the third floor."

"Aren't afraid he'll get to them?" "Are you kidding? He's too daft to tie his own shoe laces. Good luck, Kid.: She said, touching me on the lips.

She turned to the muscular man, saying "Even purgatory costs 15cents, too bad ou can't affort do go anywhere but here. See you soon." The door slid shut, and she left.

That was the end of the transcript I found in my basement the other day, going through boxes prior to a move. Though it was twenty years ago, I still remember how this dream ends. I take the elevator to the third floor, where I can get out for something like 17cents, and the man cannot. It is a beautiful, grassy place, with an early twentieth-century bandstand sporting a brass band, gentlemen picknicking with their families, and bicycles. I do not have too much trouble finding the devil's former house, as a mortal or whatever they are on the third floor, one floor removed from our reality, and there it is, that book of with pages of unused stamps.

The Most Brutal Metal Album Ever

The Most Brutal Metal Album Ever

Pantera-Vulgar Display of Power.

In the aesthetics of metal, it is pretty much impossible to describe a song, a band, a guitar riff, or a performance, without using one, or all of four adjectives: "brutal", "sick", "hard", and "heavy". If you asked a typical metalhead to sit down with a number two pencil and a sheet of college ruled paper and define each of those terms, he or she would probably stab you in the hand and leave. Listeners are amazingly consistent, however, in the way they use these terms. Some bands are great without ever being brutal. In Flames is almost never brutal. Sonata Arctica and Nightwish do not do brutal at all-EVER. Some of it is seems to be in the lyrics, some of it in the melodies, and a hell of a lot of it in the rhythm and the structuring of tempos, but "brutal" is pretty easy to put a finger on when you experience it as a listener. It is that feeling of wanting to put a hammer through four inches of plaster and lath, knock out a hole, reach through, and wring your goddamned neighbor's neck for blocking your driveway with his fucking SUV. That these feelings can be invoked and channeled, through music, is a powerful statement about who we are as a species. Brutal is all about testosterone. Brutal is not about killing orcs on a distant battlefield, it is about killing the man who mistreated your sister, or the pit bull who is loose in the alley.

Pantera pioneered brutal, and in many ways, nobody has ever gone farther. This particular album is, in my opinion, absolutely the most brutal metal album ever recorded. A great deal has been said about it musically, and it is regarded as a masterwork. Lyrically, it goes to some deep dark places. I have trouble listening to it, because it inspires me to go out to the nearest street corner and start beating up drug dealers with a bat, then set them on fire. This feeling persists for days and could cause me legal problems sooner or later. One thing that makes this particular album so successful is the personal nature of the lyrics-they seem pretty much from the heart and that is a chilling realization. It is pretty hard to find a place for these emotions, once uncaged, so I save this one for special occasions.

Some other albums that, to me, stand out as some of the most brutal:

Napalm Death-Mentally Murdered EP. More abstracted, more ambitious, and a much harder listen,.

Kreator-Pleasure to Kill.

This is one of my favorite albums ever, though the lyrics are far less personal (and much harder to make out) than any Pantera post Cowboys from Hell, and it creates a much less focused feeling of rage.

Macabre-Murder Metal. This is a masterpiece of brutality. I think it pretty much comes down to whether you can buy into their extreme flights of fantasy. I saw them play live, many years ago, and it was a little like seeing Gille de Rais on one of his killing sprees.

Most Perfect Black Metal Album Ever

I should probably mention here that Old Man's child's Vermin is the most perfect black metal album ever made, by my estimation, though there is a lot of great black metal I have yet to hear.

It is amazing. I suppose I am drawn to bands like this-I am a huge Bathory fan. There is so much that can get done when a single, crazy and probably ill-tempered individual, calls all the shots and executes his true vision. It is a masterpiece, especially because it has a sort of balance that a great deal of black metal lacks-a constant sense of evil and impending doom.

I person could seriously listen to the whole thing, imagining that spiders were crawling all over them, and have a good time. That is what Black Metal is supposed to do for us, that or go to war with an axe.

To The Queen of Winter

Hail, Mercia, Queen of the Winter

You, who wield a sword of frost and a halo of freezing stones.

Your beautiful lips the death of any man who touches them.

Your breath a memory of death and past lives.

I long for you.

Upon whose breasts I would die a thousand times.

The pale of your skin stripping my flesh and sinew

as I pressed my mortal frame, longing and breathless

against the loveliness of your desire.

I long for you.

You, who have not aged a day

as my frame has crept from youth to the footstep of old age

I have longed for your black lips and snow covered valleys

your snow white hair and your glacier eyes

you grow like a tree within me

I have felt you in my heart for so long

I have walked your forests when there was nowhere to walk to

I have stared into those woods at night.

I long for you.

A Cautionary Tale

I start by scavenging a few pieces of plywood. Before you know it, I have built a hut. I found some two by fours, and had some leftover nails. I already had a power drill. It was cordless, so I brought it into the back yard, and started adding a second floor to my hut. Soon, I realized, it needed a door. I added a door I found in the alley. I bought a lock set for it. I locked myself out, so I had to tip the thing over. I dug a big, rectangular pit and filled it with cement, and posts. I built a nice, solid frame she on those posts, and then dragged my hut on top of the thing. I had to cut a hole into the ceiling, then add a ladder, to access my hut. Now the upstairs had a door to nowhere, so the whole structure needed a deck. I sunk a proper foundation for the deck, with posts. The whole thing needed drywall. It also needed electricity, so I took care of that before I drywalled the place. I did not need a building permit, because this was just an experiment in building huts out of found lumber. I built a deck to the deck. I built another deck. Soon, the decks needed an overhanging pagoda ceiling. Once built, I was pretty set back monetarily, so I started writing a grant. I never mailed the grant, because the next day, I realized that my hut had started to build itself. Someone or something had drywalled the Pagoda, complete with framed-out windows, so you could still see my original hut, deep within. I had lunch, and a couple of beers, wondering who or what paid for these new materials. I was almost too broke to pay for the beer. By the time I came home, someone or something had added a moat. By next morning, the moat was a filled-in tunnel surrounding the compound, the thing was painted in Cape Cod colors, and someone had added wind chimes. I could almost see it growing now. Here and there, the plywood floor would creak, as an interior wall was added. Soon, that stopped, because there was interior carpet. The place had high-speed internet. I could tell this because someone or something was playing Pandora. I turned, to leave and go to work, when I realized I was walled in. Someone or something had built a palisade wall bounding my property. I have to admit, I freaked out for a few minutes, till I found the door. It had a handsome knocker. There was a new moat. Already, neighbors and strangers from all parts of town were gathering in my front yard, gawking. I walked outside to join them, noticing for the first time that the thing had assumed the shape of a ziggurat. I went to work. By the time I got home, the thing was ten stories tall. Something inside was playing piano. I opened the door, followed a long, red-carpeted hallway to a refrigerator stocked in expensive lemonade, and helped myself to a beer. These were not my beers. My initial building expenses had used up all my beer money. By the time I was done with the beer, I realized there was no front door, no outside, only my hut.

A VISION OF PURE METAL

Skulls, black obsidian, carved like Maya temple decorations, arrayed like peaches in some improbable orchard. Each and every one of them has the glowing eyes of DOOM. Oh, great ones, I crawl beneath you, through this hall of diabolical judgement, towards the INFERNUM. Guitars, like pickets, rise imposingly to either side of me. In the distance, where the two walls lead but do not touch, a column of flame rises, and before it, a throne. I have paid homage to you through DEATH METAL, through the most sinister of imaginings, through the loathsome, despicable, and decadent lifestyle I have lived for these many years.

Flames rise from every direction, and in those flames, images of strippers dancing on poles, saber-toothed cats bringing down extinct megafauna, girls in catholic schoolgirl uniforms setting fire to garages. The unholy IT sits beside its master, GREAT BAPHOMET, an a mighty stone made from the bones of extinct reptiles, magma from the formation of ancient supercontinents, and ten million broken guitar strings, all melted into chrome tailpipes, projecting from the thing like antlers.

Baphomet, so beautiful, the body and face of a Las Vegas hooker, eyes of a reptile. Observes.

This is the DEATH METAL level of Hell, deeper yet than the frozen lake, next door to Tartarus, where the imprisoned titans groan and strain against their shackles. Here, the strains of Deicide and Morbid Angel, Possessed and Goatwhore, wail against the disembodied screams of metal's victims. Metalhead, beware. One stray footfall from the path of TRUE METAL, and you could join these eternal outcasts, wailing in the wind for all eternity, rather than sit at the LEFT HAND of BAPHOMET, baptized in the wail of guitar.

Catastrophic break line rupture, tow truck, enforced picnic in the grass, auto repair bills

the lesson for the week is that i am, at best, half smart, and entirely foolish. i keep scanning the horizon, for things to look about, so that that terrible day will never come, but when it creeps around the corner, i practically invite the thing into my kitchen for orange juice and donuts. stopping a car is pretty damned important, something i should have learned from the internet, and i guess things could be a lot worse right now. there is a part of me that wants to be charmed, to have bad things never happen, even when probability dictates that a seventeen year old car is going to break down in spectacular ways. i guess i am a little attached to certain aspects of my life right now, the picnics, the park, but things change and things happen. still, it gnaws at me, a game i am loosing, against the giants i owe money to. last year, i could say that things are tough all over, and we are weathering this storm pretty damned well, but the storm is ending, and the giants who caused it have grown even stronger. when will it be time for MY donuts?

I Could Never Have Made it as a Hunter-Gatherer

How do I arrange to sit my fat ass on a barstool, and do goddamned nothing all day? Because if there is a recipe for this, I think I need to know how I might go about pursuing such an occupation. Perhaps I could become one of those people the call town drunks. Perhaps, instead, I could arrange to be born with a permanent, parasitic twin growing somewhere south of my bellybutton. Perhaps this twin would require a basket. Perhaps the government might be obliged to send me pills in the mail every single month. Perhaps I could live among the storks and ostriches, the only creatures that will accept me. I wonder how long I could live in a lean-to anyway. I wonder about cardboard boxes sometimes, too. If I could somehow claim the real estate under a cardboard refrigerator box, in Manhattan, I could sell the property and arrange to sit on a barstool for the rest of my life. How can there be any poor people in New York City, anyway? How can they call a person "homeless" when he has staked out a good spot under an overpass. Clearly he or she has a home, it is simply a very BAD home. Home is where the heart is. A person can live out of a suitcase, but not actually live in a suitcase. There are suitcases big enough to sleep in, I have seen them. I suppose it depends upon whether a person is short. I slept in a cave, once. The thing about my cave is that it had an oval depression, from where a mountain lion probably slept, on occasion. I slept in a mountain lion's bed once. I was a fool for sleeping in that mountain lion's bed. It had no sheets-it was a rock overhang. I do not know if I could have made it as a hunter-gatherer....probably not.

The Violent Hour

The Violent Hour

A Culinary Review

By PsyCHO Butcher

Chicago suffers from an unfortunate "second city" complex, a mayor who hates nightlife because his father was an abusive drunk, and a certain halfheartedness when it comes to doing anything that might be construed as "uppity". Fortunately, their is a little cloud hovering just south of the el stop at North and Damen avenues, and this strange miasma seems to block the banal rays we emit, by virtue of our own working-class chumpishness. The result is that this address spawns interesting businesses like serpents from a stone. True, the first two failed in short order. Mod was a wonderful place...the first failure-it had a science fiction flair to it, and mac and cheese so good I was tempted to break the window to the place and rob a portion from a customer. I liked the egg-and-spacemodule motif. It made me imagine I was dining on a planet where ninety percent of this dreadful species had already gone extinct, and those few of us that survived had ample deviled eggs to go around.

Del Toro had terrible service, but great furniture. Each chair was like a torture device. Fortunately, you can still see the saddle-barstools, more suited to sadomasochistic pleasure than to lattes, across the street at Cippollina. It was an interesting place, this second failure, with great tile and strange horse stalls for bathrooms.

Hopefully, The Violet Hour will stick around, because the city needs it. We need a drinking space that shrouds itself in veils of image. We need a place to drink expensive cocktails and pretend we are cooler, more literary, more travelled, and genuinely interesting than we are. We need a place that serves absinthe and chicken wings on the same menu. For now, we have it, and I approve quite strongly.

From the outside, the place is a cipher. They keep changing the exterior, from one cryptic ruse to another. Do not look for a sign, you will not find one. Once the valet starts parking cars, this is merely annoying, but just as they open the doors, it imparts a bit of a speakeasy feel to the place. To augment this, the entranceway is dark and heavily curtained, stark, and obviously purposed to give would-be patrons the unmistakable impression that they have walked into the wrong place and should leave. I like this. Darkness, drama, chandeliers, and very tall chairs that resemble thrones. This place is very black metal, and to risk belaboring the point, I approve. The place feels such like a maze-a patron needing to tiptoe and squeeze between chairs in the event that they do not guess the correct path across the room in the darkness, amid a forest of overly tall seats-that is was disappointed not to see a corner devoted solely to death traps for the unwary. Perhaps such a thing is too much to ask in a place that carries a Chicago Liquor license, but their cocktails are deliciously inventive and served with an air of drama.

The place seems purposed to scare away tourists, frat boys, and the lame. To seal the deal, the place has a dress code and requests that patrons do not use cellphones.

Now comes the subject that your churlish and stupid friends will raise, either at the mere mention of the place, or upon discovering that the cocktails there cost something like fourteen dollars each (I frankly do not remember, for reasons I will mention in a moment). They are worth it, each and every one. Of course they are. The bartenders lavish time and care on each drink, and use very fine ingredients. Neither of these objections hold any weight whatsoever if a person visits for the purpose of imbibing one, or perhaps at most, two cocktails. After all, who goes out in the evening expecting to spend less than twenty dollars (a person must factor in the tip)? Such frugal evenings are best spent, enjoyably, on the fire escape, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and trying to eek the last resin out of a cannabis pipe. Places like this are for the theatre and ambiance of the place, and if a good buzz is needed, that must wait for the second, or third drinking establishment of the evening. What would be the purpose of having more, at a place like this? To get drunk? Getting drunk at swanky clubs is for the stupid-for people who order bottles of expensive vodka served to their tables at night clubs and covet the experience of the VIP room. People like that can die, frankly.

I arrived with my usual coterie of exotic dancers and adult film stars, on a weeknight, just after they opened. I suppose I avoided the line by doing this, but the fact of the matter is that my companions had serious work to do later in the evening, bilking needy men out of money they would otherwise spend on their families. My cocktail was something called a Vincent's Downfall, a Van Gough reference, of course, an homage to its liberal use of absinthe. It was delicious. One of my companions, a longtime friend for many years, devoured a whole plate of chicken wings without stopping. If you have never watched a sexy woman, trained in the art of adult entertainment, devour a full plate of chicken wings as if the Earth was about to run out of food, you should. I do not remember much about our conversation, absorbed by lust as I was the whole time, but it was a great experience and a great room to showcase desire and lust of all sort, for chicken wings or otherwise.

Finally, I am glad to meet you, Osiris

i thought it was strange to see it like that-the scarlet hue of the thing. it wasn't. even grey, it would find a way of looking the way it did. seven thousand tomorrows later and i have not lost an hour of sleep over it. still, it helps for a man to look back and appreciate what he had, while he was having it. i admit i am, and have been, a voyeur. i also admit that i have been know to eat a whole box of Chips Ahoy in a sitting. i try never to park illegally not because i am decent but because i am a coward. i also blame other people for stealing my stamps. but still, even back in my youth i tried to stand for something worth standing for. i always liked the taste of green vegetables, and usually i have not driven a car to worry about parking. on that scale, the thing looked just like they do in anatomy textbooks. it was not curiously worn around the edges. it had a black spot or two here and there, but as i mentioned, upon closer examination, most of that black was grey calling itself black so as not to be misrepresenting itself. the thing had a lot of grey, it was mostly grey, i admit it. Osiris, how am i doing here?

Coffee, and More Coffee, a Culinary Review by Psycho Butcher

Dear Readers,

Finally, I can write you from beyond the shackles of my unfortunate incarceration, for crimes which I am entirely innocent. That entire time, behind bars, I craved a decent cup of coffee-one not produced or adultrated by Sysco in any way.

Ahhhh. The independent coffee shop. I used to love the places. Years back, in Los Angeles, Dear Reader, I was deeply engrossed in the so-called "Hair Metal" scene. It took something like two hundred cups of coffee a day to keep me functioning, because I could afford neither the cocaine nor the hairspray to keep up with the lifestyle. Suffice it to say that I spent time at now-legendary coffee shops like Java, and The Living Room. In this latter venue, a young Drew Barrymore sneered and turned her back at me, rather than make me a cappuccino, and I stormed out of the place, threatening to burn it down. True story, but they had great coffee, and comfortable couches. The fact of the matter is that each of these little places, scattered throughout the hipster neighborhoods of the cities, had its own personality. I remember the day I saw the first Starbucks in Los Angeles. I was impressed by the green colors, actually, not aware that one more aspect of culinary culture was about to be absorbed by the dull and lifeless tide of globalization/homogenization/banality. I finally left the scene, and the city, for Scandinavia, seeking revenge for many wrongs done to me, through Black Metal, but that is another story.

In Chicago, at the same time, we boasted something like twenty independent coffee shops of our own. Then, Starbucks came, like Christian Missionaries bearing smallpox infested blankets, and within ten years, we were left with three or four. All the others gave up the ghost, the competition with friendly green yuppie frappuccino being too much for them. One of the notable holdouts was a place called Filter, which is more than legendary, nowadays, as a place where Bohemians in the Wicker Park neighborhood used to hook up, and generally hatch acts of gossip and innuendo. It was a fine place, with an excellent menu of coffee drinks, some with names like "Purple Bhudda", and food that was two or three orders of magnitude brighter than the usual plastic-wrapped questionables available in the cooler of a Starbucks. One or sever of the owners of this place lost his/her (there were three, all crazy) lease, got lazy, or otherwise grew unappreciative of all the money I had invested in his/her motorcycles and cocaine habit, by consuming one overpriced coffee drink after another hatching memos like the one you, Dear Reader, are writing at this exact moment. Anyway, the old Filter is gone, long live the new Filter, resurrected farther south on Milwaukee Avenue, and in many ways superior to the old one. The old space was triangular and commanded an amazing view of "The Action", that being the crazy people and drunk club kids that meandered the intersection of North and Damen on every night worth going out. This new place has no view to speak of save the other patrons-but seeing and being seen was always the real meat of the Filter experience back then and it still is. This place has generously free Wi-Fi, for two hours at least with a purchase, a feature the old one lacked because some dickhead thought he could make money charging the patrons. That dickhead is probably still around, but he bought first rate restaurant equipment, hired people who genuinely know what they are doing (many were plucked from other notable coffee shops, such as the Mercury), spent some serious money crafting a nice space with sufficient electric plugs, and generally created a place worth hanging out, for hours, while finishing the liner notes to an album. In case it is relevant, because this is a culinary review, their coffee is amazing, and their food solidly good. Their chicken Caesar wrap particularly well-conceived and crafted, their turkey burger and Thanksgiving wrap much less so. Their tea selection is great, and their food runners much more effective than in the last place. Filter girls from the last place, if you are reading this, I dream about devouring each and every one of you sexually and cannibalistically. The current ones I am just getting to know, but the new counter is designed to actually serve food rather than to showcase the beauty of hot, sweaty, hipster chicks working behind a busy counter in close proximity. Sigh.

An unexpected and new coffee shop has sprung up just north of the place. The wormhole. It is a nostalgia coffee house, complete with a prop from "Back to the Future", possibly never used, a De Lorean fitted with time travel modifications. Hopefully, the owner will sell this waste of space, pay off his or her investors, and put tables in the window there. There are no window tables, and this is unfortunate. I also want him or her to pay off their investors because the place should stay here. This place needs some wear. It needs some stories. Its coffee is every bit as good as Filter's, and far better than Starbucks, if for no other reason than it is served in reusable cups, by efficient staff, in a timely manner. It includes Intelligentsia alums among its staff, a wise move, because these refugees know how to make coffee and handle volume. Intellgentsia, of course, is some of the best coffee this side of Portland, but the new means of producing drip coffee, one slow funnel at a time, take so long that many people are justifiably put off by the slowness of the process. Yes, I know that in my previous entries I have pointed out that the STRONG wait, the WEAK do not, but my time is damned precious, and I am not sure that the results at Intelligentsia are worth the wait. I digress. The artifacts at the Wormhole are amusing, but not necessary, and I hope the posters for The Goonies are taken down, one after the other, over time, and replaced by graffiti. In the meantime, I will go there often, precisely because they do not serve food to speak of, and because i enjoy the place. Both are welcome, both should be patronized.

Oh Beezelbub

Another EVIL PRAYER, revealed. I cannot say where I get these, though I have come across them at great personal jeopardy. I post this as a WARNING, to those of you who do not think the forces of darkness and devil worship are real. This prayer is every bit as real as the Satanic sex ring at the McMartin preschool, and should be taken seriously. Once again, DO NOT attempt to read this invocation aloud, or it could have serious consequences to your well-being.

Oh, Beezlebub, lord of the Flies.

Once known as Baal, rival Yaweh for celestial power, god of the golden calf and tempter of the Hebrews in their shameful flight from Egypt, patron of the City of Carthage, whose sacrificial urns did run red with the blood of children, an honor to your lordship, and of Ninevah, where men did raise great battle flags in your honor and conquer great kingdoms, destroying the ancient kingdom of Israel in your name. Lord Beezlebub, who sits at the right had of Lucifer himself, brothers in arms against Heaven and Earth, who fought the heavenly hoardes with a flaming sword. Beezlebub, Lord Mighty! ruler of hell and master of infernal dominions, grant me the power to make war, sow destruction, and spread plague.

Accept this, my sacrifice, a bull's head, in a silver bowl, dead and rotting for sixty six days time, under the summer sky day and night the whole time, and festering with flies.

Your Lordship, grant me the power to spread jealousy among the churches and congregations, to instill fears of embezzled twenty dollar bills and cannabis butter at the church bake sail, to provoke bullying and orgies of buggering as the church campout, to lead fine young men astray to worship false gods like Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate, and Iron Maiden. I will continue the war with heaven, my master, by tempting good and faithful priests to bow and touch my ivory backside, to kiss my immoral black lips, by tempting noble and honest ministers with prostitutes and promises of cocaine, by tempting girl scouts with cannabis-laden cookies and the notion of a life without servitude to men. Beezlebub, master, I await your infernal command.