The Gold Voyager Record

It it still playing downstairs. A wonderful student found (me/her and she shared) a copy of the soundtrack to the gold record they mounted on the Voyager spacecraft. It is a work of absolute genius. It is, quite possibly, the most important mix tape ever made, even given that no extraterrestrial will ever find it, because it will be on a chunk of dark, nonfunctioning machinery, in a gigantic void, with a real scarcity of entities looking for it or anything else out there or anywhere. I do not think that, in the history of Earth, anyone ever attempted to compound any document, artwork, or other communication intended to represent not just our species as a whole, but our planet as a whole. Funny that I have spent my whole life without hearing it, funny that it needed to be tracked down, and is not in the discount bins of Reckless Records. It is important not for what effect it might have OUT THERE, but for what effect it could have down here.

I have always gotten the impression from the late Dr. Sagan's writings, especially The Cosmic Connection, that the astronomer did his share of mind altering drugs. I am guessing he took LSD more than once, just speculating here. He and his wife were well-documented marajuana users, and advocates of the responsible use of cannabis and reform of the laws against it. Ann Druyan and Carl actually met during the creation of that record, which makes it that most wonderful of mixtapes; a mix to be played by or with a loved one while they are high. Mix tapes take on a new meaning when they are played for the drug-crazed. Contrasts thrill the listener, who has sunk into his own insular world, pieces with depth and subtlety get the listen that they deserve. This Voyager record, it had the feel of a drug mix. An amazing drug mix.

And why not? To step outside of onesself in that small way is just the beginning. Imagine the contrast between any nonhuman that finds such a record and our own. It is a million times greater than the next most unlikely possibility, that human beings somehow, for some reason, listen to this same recording, survived somehow over the ages, five thousand years from now. To a pharoah, this mix would make perfect sense, actually, if it could somehow played for him, such is the ingenuity of its creators in their urge to universalize the human experience. An extraterrestrial, finding the spacecraft somehow, analyzing the gold record, pitted by micrometeorites from eons in space, would have to be a million times more intelligent than we are to figure out how to play it. True, the gold disk with a spiral running to its center does invite almost ANYONE to spin the thing, I think, but from there, figuring out that the depth of the channel carved into it carries an information signature, an analog signature, for a series of compression waves, would take an amazing insight. Naturally, I do not expect an extraterrestrial to have ears in the sense that we have them. I imagine that the same signal transferred into a light beam, varying color and intensity, would make about the same amount of sense to them anyway. It is much more likely to be viewed, than seen, I imagine because so many more terrestrial organisms have eyes as opposed to eyes and ears, or just ears. Ironically, the whalesong on the CD, untranslatable to us, might be the only think they can decode. This is not to say that aliens should have a natural proclivity for whalesong, they should not, but if they cannot decode the human speech, maybe there is a chance at whalespeech.

Thank you Carl.

Oh, Leviathan

Once again, I post this as a warning, for the purpose of enlightening those among us who are not SURE that horrible monsters lurk in the sea and can be summoned. As with everything else on Bloodonaspaceguitar, it is COMPLETELY CREDIBLE. As before, we must warn the reader not to read this passage aloud. Doing so could have terrible consequences. This incantation has been posted for the purpose of STUDY, to inform the populace that terrible incantations like this DO exist, and warn the reader to live a clean and steady life from now on.

Oh Leviathan. Spawn of mother Tiamat, godhead of the primordial chaos, ruler of chaos, of all the dark oceans and strange voids, you sit at her side in the Abyss, a lord of creation, bringer of doom and change. Celestial dragon, beast of sea and dark sky, your seven heads contain the mightiest wisdoms, see the farthest corners of the Earth, look upon the lowly creatures of this planet, our mighty avenger. Mighty Leviathan, rise up from the infernal void, from the depths of the deep dark blue, from mile after mile of dark trench and sickening blackness, where you rule like the mightiest of kings, over the pale fishy inhabitants of the void below. Lord Leviathan, rise up and smite the humans who have crawled upon the surface of the earth like a plague of locusts. Rise, and breathe fire upon their proud kingdoms, on their shoreline timeshare condominiums and their beach parties. Rise, and rear your seven heads to the heavens, to serve on the side of the antichrist, to confront the sky god in the final hour of Revelations. It is you, Leviathan, with the strength of the mightiest gods of old, who will breathe fire on the repentant hordes of mortal men in the last hour of the world, and ensure the continued triumph of the infernal. Lord master, rise, and see the destruction they have wrought to the oceans. See the creatures they have destroyed and the majesty they have corrupted, with their mandate to go forth and multiply, with the assurance that every beast of the field and thing that creepeth on the face of the Earth was put their for their use, and with wasteful and wanton abandon. Rise, Leviathan, and poison their air. Rise, Leviathan, and dry up all the rain clouds. Rise, Leviathan, and create terrible storms. Rise, Leviathan, and unleash plagues of disease. Avenge the worm on the end of the fisherman's hook, avenge the snake crushed under the wheels of the automobile, avenge the stingray caught in the fisherman's net, the whale cut in half by the prow of their ships. Mighty one, rise.

Emperor - A fine day to die (live)

Baphomet, Oh How I Praise Thee

This is another dangerous prayer, uncovered from the hands of Satanists and their co-conspirators, the communists and Darwinists. DO NOT attempt to read this aloud, or it could have terrible consequences. It is intended FOR STUDY, to prove that dark powers exist, and work continuously to undermine god's plan, for an earth where all mysteries are heavenly mysteries.

Baphomet, oh how I praise Thee. YOU are the keeper of the Aristotelian light, corruptor of the souls of men so that they should think higher of themselves than to suffer under god, for such is the noble and right thing to do. You alone represent the souls of the old gods, the pagan figures of the EARTH, who once brought about harvestime, brought seed to the womb of women and rainfall to the spring soil, who have now passed under heavenly wrath into oblivion. Their power is yours now, limitless and cosmic. The stars in the heavens are your province too, as is the floor of Hell, and the minds of men who seek to question the cosmic truth's handed down to them from Adam. Like the gods of spring, you unite the seed of men with the germ of woman, a cosmic power you have alone, even against the will of Yaweh. You are the mathematician and the architect, worshipped by millions of Freemasons and communists, You are the Judge, worshipped by the Gnostics in Alexandria, the Prime Mover of Plato, the Anti-God against which the Manicheans pitted all the powers of the universe. You are the anticreation, the dark opposed to the light, the maker of new flesh at the expense of the soul, the proponent of tree and field, the enemy of church and street and the hard labors of men who fear god. Baphomet, like the Bogomils before me, the Beloved, who laid down their lives for you. Husband of Tiamat, mistress of the seas and of the primordial chaos, it is your union that brought about th anticosmos, the dark between the stars, the shadow to every candleflame. Beast of Babel, grant me that I might seek to ease the sufferings of men, who might otherwise suffer for god's plan, seek to avert catastrophes conceived to test the wills of men, and to bring corrupting books and knowledge to the men who would build a new Tower.

Mighty Astaroth

A dangerous demonic prayer, revealed. DO NOT attempt to read this passage aloud, or it will have terrible consequences. IT is posted here for STUDY ONLY, in hopes that men of good souls will realize that such evil prayers exist.
Like everything else on Bloodonaspaceguitar, it is COMPLETELY CREDIBLE.

Holy Astaroth, please accept this offering of hot metal into your veins. I live to worship you, your foulness, you bringer of disease and corruption. Your power is decay, and sin, and the inevitable corruption of everything that is holy or beautiful. I live to bask in your ugliness. I would gladly sit at hour goat-heeled boot, your grotesque loveliness, an honor, to serve a demogorg such as you in Hell. In Hell, a landscape where you rule, alongside Satan, as almost an equal, a fallen angel in your own right, an enemy of Yaweh, the creator and the tyrant, an ally of Lucifer, the Lightbringer, fellow soldier in heaven and also in Hell, your cause is his cause, and our cause-to bring corruption to god's plan, to sour the milk, to smut the flower, to put a joint in the hands of a teenager, or a college student, to cause men to look at women with lust in their hearts, and feel stronger for it, for women to look at men, and at each other, with thoughts less than holy, of lust and sin, rather than childbirth and goodness, light and angels. Astaroth, it is you in your evil that seduce men into vanity, into believing that they know things that they do not, into believing that with their tools and technology, with their science and their antimagick, they can become gods, like us, glowing in platinum armour, holding swords of pure starlight. It is you that can convince a monkey, a beast of the fields favored by Yaweh with reason, that his insight can create wonders, legislate the nonexistence of god, deny the mercy of Jesus, the deceiver. Oh holiest of unholies, grant me this day that I may corrupt the minds of my fellow men, with thoughts of easy women and power, ideas about mathematics that distract from the true goodness of suffering for the celestial powers, tempt men with thoughts of beer and fine food, with drugs and sodomy and not hard work and repentance. Foul Astaroth, demon of the nine hells, I kneel before you, seeking your antiblessing.

50 Metal Bands by Dungeons and Dragons Alignment

You know you need this list, to plan your fantasy battles in Middle Earth, or to arrange a soundtrack to the screenplay you are writing in your head, the one where ettins and orcs team up with ogres to fight elves, humans, and a peculiar old wizard that is really YOU. Note that there are a lot of "true neutrals", this is because a detached perspective, that of the storyteller who does not pass judgement, is fairly common as lyrics go. Also, modern viewpoints, those grounded consciously or unconsciously in philosophies that postdate 1300, tend to register as Neutral in Dungeons and Dragons Terms. Still, many bands take sides and you might need this list. Note that there is not a single Lawful Neutral. Rock is the antithesis of that perspective. As you might have predicted, there are many more evil bands than good ones.

1. Burzum. Neutral Evil. Varg Vikernes was and is, actually, a pretty horrible and evil guy, by almost any estimation. This is not just a songwriting perspective.

2. Mayhem. Chaotic Evil.

3. Emperor. Lawful Evil.

4. Gorgoroth. Neutral Evil.

5. Toxic Holocaust. Chaotic Neutral.

6.. Metallica. Neutral

7. Venom. Chaotic Evil.

8. Megadeth. Neutral.

9. Mercyful Fate. Lawful Evil. Storytellers, yes, but inevitably on Satan's side. They made this clear in "The Oath".

10. Morbid Angel. Chaotic Evil

11. Sodom. Chaotic Neutral.

12. Kreator. Chaotic Neutral, Evil Tendencies.

13. The Scorpions. Neutral (selfish), with some chaotic and good tendencies.

14. Nightwish. Neutral Good. The song "The Carpenter" is about a version of Jesus, and they ooze empathy for people and their suffering.

15. Type O Negative. True Neutral or Neutral Evil, depending upon the song and the album. They hate god, for sure, but they rarely embrace cruelty and violence for its own sake. They are that noble kind of evil that makes for interesting villains.

16. Slayer. Here is an enigma. The band switches between alignments from one great song to the next. In one great song, they support Christ (Jesus Saves), in another, they deny him (Cult), they make a monster like Joseph Mengele seem cool, or do they vilify him? They are torn between Lawful Good, and a much stronger, Neutral Evil streak.

17. Bathory Chaotic Evil.

18. Armoured Saint. Lawful Good.

19. DragonForce. Lawful Good.

20. Stryper. Neutral Good, but too shitty of a band to be worth a damn in the fight against orcs or goblins.

21. Judas Priest. Neutral.

22. Van Halen. Neutral (selfish neutral, not true neutral) This band was all about the partying, and never took sides.

23. Black Sabbath (Ozzy Era). Chaotic Good. This might surprise you, but give all the of the songs another listen, and you will realize that Geezer Butler's lyrics were informed from a pro-Yaweh perspective, and many were warnings about Satan. They also laud figures like "The Wizard", who shake things up, and bring chaos. War Pigs is, essentially, an anthem against the forces of Lawful Evil.

24. Black Sabbath (Dio Era). True Neutral

25. Iron Maiden. True Neutral.

26. Children of Bodom. Chaotic Evil.

27. Arch Enemy. True Neutral, or an ideological Chaotic Neutral. This band can get overtly political, and many of its lyrics are against tyranny, real or more fantasy-based. It is usually the ideologically-grounded chaotic neutrals who rail against corrupt tyrannies, more than anyone else.

28. Guns N Roses. Selfish Neutral.

29. Motley Crue. Selfish Neutral.

30. Rush. Lawful Good.

31. Led Zepplein. Selfish Neutral.

32. Deicide. Neutral Evil.

33. Hellhammer. Neutral Evil.

34. Enslaved. Neutral Evil.

35. Monster Magnet. Chaotic Neutral.

36. Lamb of God. Neutral.

37. Iced Earth. True Neutral, with hints of Lawful Good. When it comes down to it, they seem to throw their lot in with God. Days of Purgatory is about Revelations, and they seem to be against the antichrist.

38. Dio. True Neutral.

39. Cannibal Corpse. Chaotic Evil.

38. Macabre. Chaotic Evil.

39. Three Inches of Blood. Neutral, Chaotic Tendencies.

40. Immortal. Neutral Evil.

41. Satyricon. Chaotic Evil.

42. Dark Funeral. Neutral Evil.

43. Nile. Neutral.

44. Possessed. Neutral Evil.

45. Motorhead. Chaotic Neutral.

46. Cradle of Filth. Neutral Evil.

47. Def Leppard. Selfish Neutral.

48. Queensryche. True Neutral.

49. Dimmu Borgir. Neutral Evil.

50. Sepultura. Neutral, but see the note for ArchEnemy.

Thirteen Metal Albums to Listen to in a Dark Room, on Mind Altering Drugs

More than any other genre of popular music, metal asks the big questions: Heaven and Hell, Doom and Repentance, Extraterrestrial Life, the Limits of Human Endurance, Power and the Lack of Power, Evil and its Exact Nature. This sort of thinking leads to the use of psychadelic drugs as surely as cocaine use leads to bankruptcy court.

This is my Father's Day list, because when my brother asked what I would rather be doing for father's day than anything else, I answered truthfully. I never really thought about it until I listened to I came to the morning DJs on my local classic rock station muse about how their ideal Father's Day. For them, such a day would be spent in a strip club, surrounded by women who had, in their childhood, been neglected by their own fathers. I don't actually need that experience, largely because those places have worked out the details of fleecing money from the customer to such perfection that there is no fun in them anymore. I am not complaining, I actually got something like this for a birthday present last year, while the wife watched the kid, and it was a blast, though we got to very little metal listening. Ideally, I would like to take this voyage alone, or with one companion who, preferably, with a woman in a kimono coming down every now and again to offer me a cold beer, a glass of water, some gummi bears.

The components of the list depend upon the drugs. Dear listener, let us assume that you have imbibed a teacup full of psylocibin tea and smoked a medium sized joint of some strain of cannabis with a fancy name, which is still lit in the ashtray. I have defined "metal" rather loosely, because our friends in the Stoner Rock camp do this thing so damned well. Hopefully, you have laid these out on top of the CD player, or have handy playlists on your computer, because you will not be able to look for them once that tea kicks in...

Thirteen.

Opeth. Orchid. Morbid and beautiful. Opeth's musical ambitions shine more brightly some evenings than others.

Twelve

The Melvins, Stoner Witch. Stoner rock, not metal, but fuzzed out Texas psychobilly genius.

Eleven.

Blue Oyster Cult, Fires of Unknown Origin. This is more proto-metal than metal, but it is over-the-top freaky and ambitious all the way through, BOC's best, in my opinion.

Ten.

Cradle of Filth, Thornography. This might be a great one to start with. About fifteen minutes into it, you will find yourself wondering if Dani Filth really is singing those lyrics. Crazy vocal vamping, unbelievably weird songs about English depravity, horror, and magic, and the truly mindblowing "Rise of the Pentagram"....

Nine.

Tiamat. Clouds/The Sleeping Beauty. Imagine that the biggest, most meatheaded pro wrestler in the WWE had a secret leaning toward existentialism, and started asking the really bigquestions. This is pretty much what you would get, as a musical narrative.

Eight.
All of Apocalyptica's albums belong on this list. This is my personal favorite.

Seven.

Neurosis, Enemy of the Sun. Skip to the next one on the list if you start getting freaked out. This is some heavy shit.

Six.

Orange Goblin, Frequencies from Planet Ten. Yes, this is more of a stoner rock album than a metal album, but it is a masterpiece.

Five.

Enslaved, Monumension. ALL of the Enslaved albums belong on this list, but it would be redundant to keep listing them. This is my pick. Yours might be Maudraum.

Four.

Emperor, In The Nightside Eclipse. Intricate and strange, full of nuances. It is, essentially, an opera.

Three.

Sleep, Jerusalem. Mandatory.

Two.

Bathory, Twilight of the Gods. About twenty five minutes into the first song, you might be wondering how something this strange ever got recorded. It really is that weird. The first song is some 27 odd minutes long and progresses from one strange phase to another.

One.

Monster Magnet, Powertrip. Mandatory, especially if you are going through any sort of transition in your life, or needed to do some serious thinking.

7/2/2010 Just an addendum. I actually GOT my Father's day present this year...last Wed, due to a death in the wife's family and their sudden and unplanned trip to South Dakota. This left me with two evenings completely lacking in parental responsibilities. On Wed, I actually DID spend much of the evening with two strippers (one of which is a very close friend of mine), who brought me to the Violet Hour and PAID MY TAB. As for the trip itself, here is the soundtrack.

Bathory..Twilight of the Gods (only the first track, I actually grew impatient with it and decided I knew it too well)

Darkthrone...Dark Thrones and Black Flags

The Voyager Interstellar Record, whole damned thing. With the classical music, I also grew impatient because the pieces, including a decent stretch of Beethoven's 5th symphony, I knew pretty well. The "world" music blew me away....especially the Blues and Latin music.

Cradle of Filth-Thornography. It was amazing...because of the state I was in, I was able to make out all the lyrics clearly, and laughed through most of it.

Mercyful Fate-In the Shadows. Amazing again, for some of the same reasons.

Ten Greatest Metal Albums/CDs of All Time

I love the exercise of choosing a list of the ten best of anything. In music criticism, these are mandatory, and usually presented as definitive. The fact of the matter is, "best" is an elusive quality, and it is situation dependent. The best metal album for a road trip might be Judas Priest (depends upon whether the listener cares about lyrics), and certainly not something like Emperor or Enslaved, because all the nuances of the latter would be lost over the road noise. Some of you have quieter cars, I suppose.

"Greatest" is a little easier to justify. It is the intersection of personal impact and cultural resonance. It implies grandiosity. PT Barnum did not create the "best" show on Earth, that was probably in some Gran Guignol theatre at the time, or perhaps in some Irish Pub, with traditional instruments, but he certainly made the Greatest Show on Earth.

So...in later posts, I will rank on other axes. I am leaving out the protometal, and other bands arguably classed as stoner rock or hard rock. Motorhead is, by convention considered to be a metal band, though Lemmy has denied this, listeners define genres, not musicians.

Here are my estimation of the ten greatest, in terms of their originality, their impact on their audience since the album was released, an on their success as an artistic statement. This is not actually my top ten favorites, certainly not the ten most interesting, or the ten i would most want to listen to in a dark basement doing drugs. Those lists come later.

Number Ten.

Judas Priest. Stained Class. One of these had to be a Judas Priest album, it was just a matter of which album, and which place on the list, such is how well regarded this band is in the minds of metal listeners. I actually listened through every great Judas Priest album before writing this, because though they are one of the greatest metal bands of all time, I am only now getting into them. Earlier in my life, I was always after something more intense, weirder, more cerebral, bleaker, druggier. It is either this one, or Screaming for Vengence, both are amazing, actually, especially if one accepts Rob Halford's thesis that lyrically, less is more.

Number Nine.

Motley Crue. Shout at the Devil. If you do not accept Motley Crue as a metal band, because hair metal is stylistically too much of a departure from metal's fundamental aesthetic, insert Children of Bodom's "Follow the Reaper" in this slot. A person cannot argue the Cru's impact on metal, or its listeners, however. This album is amazingly successful at what it tries to do: convince the listener to spend all their money on drugs and strippers. I like drugs and I also like strippers, and though it took me a while to warm up to this album personally (it was too popular in high school among people that used to beat me up, or threaten to do so), it is a masterwork.

Number Eight.

Guns n' Roses. Appetite for Destruction. As with the Motley Crue, if you do not consider hair metal to be a valid category of metal, insert Kreator's "Pleasure to Kill"in this slot. If you favor keeping one, and jettisoning the other from the list, you are not playing the game right. Both are hair metal acts. This one is even darker, even more powerful, grittier. It is the apotheosis of its genre, a time when mainstream radio stations played certain metal albums in heavy rotation.

Number Seven.

Bathory. Hammerheart. This is by no means an obscure band. Bathory are widely recognized to be important pioneers in the genres of Black Metal and Viking Metal. Still, this album sold many less copies, and was created by a band that was in many ways a single person's pet project, and in fact, never played a live show. I could keep writing about this band for pages, but suffice it to say, the genres of Black Metal, Viking Metal, and Swedish Death Metal originate with Bathory, and largely from this album. A nod belongs to Celtic Frost here, an equally influential band, more musically diverse, but less insane and driven in their artistic ambitions, as the progenitor of the black and evil stuff.

Number Six.

Motorhead, Ace of Spades. I hear that Lemmy does not actually think of Motorhead as a metal band, but I have never met a fan that agrees with him. Lemmy, if you are reading my list, Pantera's "Vulgar Display of Power" would be up here if not Motorhead. This album is the ultimate provocation for a person to go out, playing this album on the car stereo, and beat the living crap out of some dickhead that desperately deserves it, preferably while drunk.

Number Five. Slayer Reign in Blood.

At the time of its release, this was the heaviest album ever made, by far, and there would be no Death Metal were it not for this album, a thrash album, but the progenitor of so many things to come.

Number Four

AC/DC. You are, no doubt, anticipating these caveats by now. AC/DC do not actually regard themselves as metal, and their sound is basically a hard rock sound with metal overtones. If this does not count as metal to you, put Emperor's "The Nightside Eclipse" in this slot. This is the apex of the hard rock sound, chunky, clean in its execution and dirty in its subject matter. It is anthem after anthem to the rockandroll life style. A strip club, a six pack, Jack Daniels, power.

Number Three.

Iron Maiden. Number of the Beast. This album was actually panned by mainstream rock critics, at the time it was released in 1982. This is actually justified, if a music critic adheres to the elitist and inflexible notion that rock music, metal included, must adhere to some vestige of its roots in the Mississippi Delta. This album is an incredible departure from the likes of Led Zepplein and even Black Sabbath in that the inspiration for its songs was rooted solidly in fantasy and unreality. There is no song on this album that even remotely corresponds to the life of any of its listeners. This is an attribute of metal, as a genre of music, that ensures that it will always have its adherents, no matter what the current trend in music. For most contemporary manifestations of the genre, metal is escapist. Iron Maiden cross imaginary landscapes like no other band, before or since. No subject is too big for a song: Alexander the Great, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, the Battle of Britain. My personal favorite Maiden album is actually Killers, for reasons I will probably elaborate in another post, but as for their greatest, it is probably either this, or Powerslave, an equally amazing album, but less original only for the reason that it came later, and Maiden stuck very true to form after this one.

Number Two.

Black Sabbath, Paranoid. Critics who call Black Sabbath the first metal band are advocating the only truly reasonable position on the matter. Though Deep Purple and Blue Cheer ventured into dark territory, they did not stay there like Black Sabbath, nor did Led Zepplein, whose musical diversity was truly astonishing, and ventured boldly into pieces that included the first Viking metal song. Black Sabbath, however, invented a dark sound so constantly referred to by later metal bands that they are the progenitor of almost everything we recognize as fundamental to the genre. This piece is probably their greatest album. It was amazingly popular for its day, and possessed an intensity and originality never seen since its release in 1970.

Number One:

Metallica. Master of Puppets. This is on everybody's list, often in the number one slot, for a good goddamned reason. It is an incredible, groundbreaking work. Each song has a resonance, a genius for rhythm and texture, an intellectual clarity, that resonates every bit as strongly today as it did in 1986, when it punched a hole in the conventions of the time and drove a shit ton load of bricks through it. Ride the lightning might actually be better artistically, and my personal favorite is actually And Justice for All, because I love the intricate melodies and outright bleakness of the lyrics, but this is certainly the greatest.

Lady Gaga

I have been hypnotically revisiting the images in the Lady Gaga videos, over and over again, like a needle-skipping record left on the turntable as a family goes away on vacation, rushing out the door, lights on, dishes in the sink, barely packed, and strains of "Alejandro", "Poker Face", and "Bad Romance" echoing through a shag carpeted living room. Beds burn, the same incendiary autoimmolation striking the same assertive man wearing the same chin prosthetic, on infinite repeat, like the cosmos of the collapsing universe, a time stream somehow bent back upon itself, cause leading to effect leading to second cause. Again and again, I see the magnificent, goggle-clad face lasciviously pull on her black lips with a talonlike fingernail, the suggestive drills of her bodyguard, clad in Calvin Klein briefs and Prince Valiant haircuts, as they obligingly commit acts of nun rape and war crimes in one context, and submit to animal slavery in another. My one point five year old has inherited my obsessive, megalomaniacal disposition, and today I negotiated a brief respite, to show her videos of Fred Astaire, Hansel und Gretyl, Madonna, which she grudgingly tolerated, an early attempt to explain the concept of sharing. The fact of the matter is that the images are burned in her consciousness forever, and she will always desire to writhe and prance around in fancy underwear from now on, to dance with a coterie of latex clad mutants in a white room, to be bluffin' with her muffin, when the time reveals itself, though for now she is content to roll theatrically on the kitchen floor with her monkey, Alex, the same stuffed monkey who borrows my car keys and takes off for the night, to god knows where. I suppose I am being prepared for something, am I not? She will have Lady Gaga the same way I had the Honeycomb Hideout, the Trix Rabbit, the Ishmael who was Captain Crunch, their microscopic dramas played out ad infinitum across a six color canvas, to the extent that I can still remember the specious dictum that "Trix are for Kids". I wonder if her hypothalamus is putting down her first long-term memories, of a heroine in a bearskin casting a room into flames, of tiny pink tutus and the first attempts at dance steps. Hopefully, the same hypothalamus is putting down a few memories of endless afternoons in the park, of sandwiches shared on the grass, of turing over rocks to gather pillbugs to show with Mama, and a strange pastiche they will make. Rock, Pond, River, Mice, Milk, Scissors, Grahm Crackers, KISS, Sid and Marty Croft, GI Joe, Dinosaurs, Pengins, Dolls, Explosives, Peanut Butter, Grass Huts, Fear, Milk, Survival. We have barely left the savanna.

Inevitable

Invertebrate Overlord.

An update

A water fountain. The word for pigeon being "duck", because there is no way to say pigeon. A sandwich. A trip to the bookstore. A long line for donuts. Iron Maiden. Lady Gaga. A stuffed monkey, relaxing on the back porch, after a crazy night of drinking. A house party next door. A jawbone played as a washboard. I did not buy mushrooms.

In other news, lonely ichtheostegalians slide off of moss-covered logs. Clouds and sand. The brown flush of diatoms. The fear of fire. Fear of the dark. Fear of the light. The lack of mushrooms worldwide, resulting in the accumulation of carbon. Dance Flies.

In still other news. Dance flies. Bee Mimics. High waters following a thunderstorm. Two tarantulas. Bass lines. Bass ale. Largemouth Bass. Black Bass. Blackness.

A List

10 Amazing Metal CDs I need to mention right now.

Monster Magnet...Superjudge.

Iron Maiden.....Powerslave

Metallica......Ride the Lightning

Blue Oyster Cult.....Fires of Unknown Origin

Bathory....Hammerheart

Motley Crue....Shout at the Devil

Enslaved.....Frost

Satyricon/Enslaved....The Forest is My Throne/Yggdrasil

Orange Goblin.....Frequencies from Planet Ten

Dio....Last in Line

Monkeys

I just need to vent here. Alex took the car the night before last, and was out all night with it. I did not actually need the car, it is just that I do not know what Alex does on nights like that. Sometimes he leaves it with a full tank, sometimes, it is pretty damn near fumes. For a stuffed monkey, Alex is actually a pretty good driver. Stuffed monkeys are much better drivers than actual monkeys, which goes without saying. I think the person who really eggs Alex on is Pink Bunny, who has an anarchic vibe about him. Pink Bunny never lets me down though. He has been around the block more than a few times. Pink Bunny has an aura, a themesong, a vibe. Pink Bunny rocks out. Pink Bunny never actually opens his eyes. I actually live with two pink bunnies, the other being Judgie Pink Bunny, who is, in fact, a very judgmental stuffed animal. Needless to say, Judgie Pink Bunnie does not approve.

Alex is full of big plans. He must have six open checking accounts. I have no idea how he gets his money, but he has some. He also likes to run around stark naked. Everyone in this house, especially the little girl, seems to regress to hippidom at the slightest provocation. I suppose that goes for me too.

Now there is a collection of rubber duckies, led by a giant. Mostly, the giant demands to be fed, and seeks water. The duckies show up in all manner of places, the devil duckie staring down the angel duckie. The Alice Cooper duckie confronting the cheerleader. Ducks sleep at night. Monkeys drive. and accumulate those little toothpicks that spear the olives in Martinis. Lady Gaga plays, over and over again. We say goodnight to Megadeth.

I Remember Rodinia

It is true, that ancient supercontinent haunts me to this day, almost a billion years after I walked its strange, eroded landscapes. Glaciers came and went, so many times, leaving dune and boulder, rushing river and haunting mesa. Such Ice ages it had, engulfing the planet in a manner so severe as to make the last half million years look like a Los Angeles snowfall.

A big place. No trees. No grass. Only sky, and alkali earth. Only crashing waves against algae-encrusted rocks. No oxygen in the air, but warm winds of Nitrogen and water vapor, dust and salt spray. I could not light a cigarette on the beach. No dinosaurs. No people. Only a few, fresh impact craters, hosting impossibly green lakes.

At night, the strange young moon looked down on me, larger and closer than I see it today. So vivid, its mountains easily counted through the clear terrestrial sky. Mars looked the same from here, but far away on its surface, its ancient Northern and Southern oceans boiled and stormed. Rain fell, and huge volcanic plumes dusted the waters with ash. A peaceful Venus was just then erupting into a sea of lava, from deep below, well-worn rock and dry basin from evaporated ocean, features oozing into nothingness. A Saturn with no rings, Jupiter, larger even than today, with 7 magnificent haloes. No planet pluto, not where it is, at least. The star-bright sky studded with giant blue stars, as the galaxy enveloped a smaller partner, the nearest star so close a person could almost touch it, a yellow supergiant, with planets of its own. I like to think that the particulate cloud those planets passed through included some life-bearing meteorites, some archaea, an archaeocyathid, but I have never found it again, that place. The closest I have ever been is Pluto, which was theirs, not ours.

Instead, I see dry river valleys. I see strange, blue stromatolites. I see the Earth with a ring from a deadly encounter with a strange asteroid, long ago. I see iron settling to the bottom of the ocean, deep black and red. I see an Earth I lost one billion years ago. I dream.

Ants

They are making a go of it, the red ants i captured today, from the brood chamber of their colony, under a rock that must have seemed very safe till an eighteen month old was instructed on the ways of anting. And ant she did, with a plastic shovel first, and an aspirator second, though she did not know how to make the latter decice work, but tried, after removing a brick I had replaced out of mercy to the colony I raided. In fact, that colony showed itself well, rushing about so quickly I was fought to a standstill looking for victims, and moving hundreds of tiny coccoons out of the space before I could really set about to stealing them. Blood colored and beautiful, my small collective of captives is finally out of colony defense mode, and is making the best of things, having piled all the coccoons atop each other and setting about to guard them. Sentries posted. Too bad this new colony will never have a queen.

I had exercised so much restraint until this afternoon, witnessing a colony of Formica sanguinaria raid another colony of a congeneric Formica, two columns locked in deadly battle, slave making begun within the ant world, for the more practical purpose of eliminating the competition and just plain theft. Soon, I place a light trap in that same yard, hunting for queens, blood red or matte black, to start colonies from scratch.

My dream.

Can you please tell me why I cannot dig a moat? Or a tunnel? Immediate response would be that the former device might kill a person and the latter would enable me to hide in an underground lair day and night, till my friends became genuinely concerned. Both outcomes would be desirable, and expected, and are no reason not to dig a moat or build a tunnel. I regret that I am not digging now. For some reason, I have been convinced to not pry open the trapdoor in my basement, and dear viewers, you can trust me when I assure you that such a trapdoor exists, and is curiously welded shut no less. For other reasons, too numerous and unsatisfying to list here, I have been talked out of enlarging whatever space exists beneath that mysterious trapdoor, with a shovel, and buckets, and much tracking of soil through the living room, till a hollow cubic space existed large enough to panel in plywood and green board and even to wire with electricity, and to floor with plywood and perhaps ceramic tile, leaving just enough room on the floor for a second trap door. This is the sort of home improvement I set about to get started when I bought this property of mine, and for reasons too numerous and too fundamentally insubstantial to cite here, I was talked into reworking light fixtures and removing vinyl tile. Such a disguise above would have made my tunnel building all the more evocative, I think. A cot. At the end of a twenty foot corridor, underneath two subbasements, a cot. My throne. I would have a ventilation shaft, and cigars. Maybe warm beer. I would survive on canned goods. This was my dream. Time to grab a beer and think about my dream.

Cold Is Hot In Evolution: Researchers Debunk Belief Species Evolve Faster In Tropics

Cold Is Hot In Evolution: Researchers Debunk Belief Species Evolve Faster In Tropics

More Species In The Tropics Because Species Have Been There Longer, Study Suggests

More Species In The Tropics Because Species Have Been There Longer, Study Suggests

Who are we sharing the planet with? Millions less species than previously thought, new calculations suggest

Who are we sharing the planet with? Millions less species than previously thought, new calculations suggest