Supermourning

Superman knew he was too late well before he pulled the car from the crevasse. Lois was dead. He’d gone after the nuclear missile; he had to. One love, however great, isn’t worth millions of lives. He’d done the right thing, but even at super-speed you can’t be everywhere at once. The rightness of his choice was little consolation. As he looked down at her broken body, a brokenness he could barely conceive of, a great sorrow shook his body. She was the one, she was gone. He would always be alone.

Sorrow turned to despair, and despair to howling rage. In fury he took to the sky. He accelerated past sound and light barriers, circling the Earth again and again. His revolutions magnetized the ions of space, pushing back on the earth’s spin. West to east he whipped around, and the Earth began to turn backwards. For the first time since the birth of the solar system, the sun set in the East, as the day reversed itself.

Finally he broke his spin and let the Earth return to its usual course. He came down to where he’d left Lois before his flight. Of course, she was still dead, but at least everything else was as well. His gyration of the earth had set loose massive tidal waves, balkanized the Earth’s crust, and stripped the atmosphere off the planet. Now all was rapidly freezing lava. Superman sat down on the freezing rock that was his home, and began to mourn his lost love.

“That’s better,” he thought.

--Dan Kilian

Batman vs. The Taliban

Dear Acme Product Returns

What Obama Needs To Say

At their next debate, when Romney reverses himself on a position that he had previously espoused, Obama should say, "Wait, is that you, Mitt?  Keeping track of your positions is just about impossible. I half expect you to peel of your face and have it be Tom Cruise under there. Or maybe a lizard, I don't know."

This does a few things:

1) It holds Romney to his nomination-stage extremism and exposes his pandering shiftiness.

2) It points out how unlikable Romney is on a physical level.

3) It calls attention to the Reptoid agenda that is at the heart of the GOP platform.

Problem solved.



--Steve Kilian

Dear Acme Product Returns

Buncha Videos

 

Mother Inferior

They could smell burning flesh as they approached the temple. The sweet smoke rose from a woman – perhaps one of the Order.  She had been impaled on a roughly hewn wooden post sunk in the fountain of the entry courtyard. When last they had visited the place that fountain ran with clear water. Now the spring had been fouled; a thick, dark fluid ran clotted and scabbed over the rim of the fountain, puddling around the woman.

She shuddered slightly as they approached, her frame settling lower on the post. The smoke came from a necklace she wore about her neck. Her skin cracked and sputtered around the cord and whatever amulet it held, scorched scar tissue trying to swallow the thing. She opened one bloodshot eye -- the other was nothing more than a crusted mass of pus -- and looked down at the men surrounding her. A croak that was almost a sigh leaked around the shaft of the post jutting from her mouth.

Her vestments were filthy with blood and sweat, and hung loosely to expose swaths of skin that had been marked with crude lettering. Tharon traced his finger across the script, black letters on cracked and peeling skin. They had been burned into her side. He thought back to his days at the monastery, learning the ancient tongues from bent-backed priests. Before he could remember the name of the language the translation came to him: "Mother Inferior."

As if this were a joke.

"How can she still be alive?" asked one of his companions. He couldn’t focus on which one it had been, couldn't see anything but the abomination in front of him, couldn't breathe anything but the greasy cloud that threatened to choke the hope from his voice. As if in response, the woman's exposed skin crackled with fresh vigor as the sun came from behind a cloud. Her body twitched and shivered, and her one eye bulged and finally popped in a gout of steaming gore that turned to smoke before hitting the ground. Still she whimpered.

He unlimbered his pack and hefted his mace. The words of the ritual gathered in his mind, almost unbidden. "She's not," he said.

--Steve Kilian

Zoning Out

Mr. Obama: Playground Monitor

How She Can Talk!

My dad’s brother can give me some medicine to get me sober,” she said drunkenly.

“We’re near the top! We’re in a cloud!” she called out, optimistically.

“You’d like me to say yes, but how can you get me to say yes?” she muttered, gnomically.

“I do not like the Irish,” she muttered, gnomically.

“I think I hear something in the cubby space upstairs!” she said, erratically.

“My piercing is infected. Does that make you hot?” she asked, erotically.

“I’ve got two penises!” she said, ridiculously.

“We should stick together, with no one else!” she declared, jealously.

“I can tell what you’re doing,” she said icily.

“There is no hybrid between our planet and the red planet,” she declared, mirthlessly.

“I’m a one-armed cheerleader! The other arm got infected,” she announced pompously.

“I’m going to stand up, but I’m going to make my body into a circle,” she said, overtly.

“My arms and legs are quite flexible, but right now they’re too cold!” she said, limberly.

“I’m going to put my body in a right angle, and it is sexy!” she said, finally.

--Dan Kilian

She Had More To Say, and How She Said It

She Had Still More To Say And How

Big Ideas

With the close of the conventions, I’ve heard a bit of commentary that Barack Obama doesn’t have any big ideas to propose for his second term. Why doesn’t he propose some transformative legislation to really challenge America to evolve into its next progressive phase. Because the American people don’t want a jobs program, they want a man on mars or something.

A jobs program? How pedestrian! Where is the hope and change of 2004? I’ll tell you where it went. It got shit out of America along with the jobs in 2004. We need jobs, but the Republicans won’t pass anything that helps the economy, because they are a disloyal opposition scheming for power when they could be helping people. So here’s a bold new idea. Re-elect Barack Obama because fuck those guys.

Last night during a bout with insomnia I thought of what kind of big idea someone could propose, if he wanted his reelection campaign to spin wildly off message, so as to assuage some columnist. Here’s what I got.

The Public Option: Obama can’t fight this battle. He lost it and gave it up, so we could have the framework for Obamacare, which is getting more popular every day, at least for Mitt Romney. But the shit is coming back, probably as an issue for Hillary in ’16.

Legalize It: It’s gonna happen, but not this year. Weed for the cigarette companies, and medicinalize the war on drugs. Save a bunch of lives in Latin America, and do a whole hell of a lot of good. We’ve had a war on drugs since Nixon, and drugs won.

Drop The Embargo On Cuba: This is the kind of thing you drop on people in your second term, not run on. All we need is for Castro to die and his brother to spread some fig leaf of reform. Personally I’d just admit that the US has stubbornly waged economic war on Castro for fifty years and Castro won.

A World Wide Minimum Wage: If all the wealthy democracies could unify on a policy of equity for all, they could form some international committee which would factor in separate nations’ economic needs to determine what a fair wage would be to lift labor above exploitation levels. They could still benefit from low wages, but if they fail to pass the bar set by the World Wide Minimum Wage committee they would face an international tariff. This would be attacked as both protectionist and world governmental, but that’s what it’s going to take to protect the American and Post-War Dream (That’s right, I’m deep into Floyd).

A Moratorium on Drone Strikes: I don’t know, maybe if we stopped killing people they’d like us more.

A War on Starvation: If the US concentrated world opinion on this goal, some international system could be devised so that kids would have those big air-swollen bellies and hopeless eyes. Again, maybe people would like us more.

Bring The Troops Home Early: Accelerate this shit. Karzai’s gonna end up with his head on a spike anyway, might as well have less of our people dying for it.

A True Green Revolution: The American people are ready to dramatically change their way of life to fight global warming. At least some are, especially if we devise a system where they can benefit from meeting carbon footprint reducing goals. How about a gas tax which won’t apply to people who keep their housing heating low? Just spitballing here, but there’s a bunch of behaviors we could positively encourage. If only the hippies and do-gooders are helping, we’re going to toast this planet.

There you have some big bold ideas which would totally distract from the only issue Americans care about which is jobs. Here’s an idea: The Republican Party has been taken over by nimrods and brain-blown maniacs living in a fantasy land of conspiracy theories, pursuing impossible, dangerously reactionary goals. The GOP needs to be killed for the sake of progress. Nothing will get done, and no level-headed critiques of Democratic misdeeds will emerge from this party. They need to die. So vote for Obama for the sake of a new opposition and because fuck those guys.

--Dan Kilian

Summer

Kruller

Dinobot

--Dan Kilian

Pets

Surviving The End of The World

Discussion of Gojira's "Dawn"

With the birds singing at the beginning of it i just imagine an empty field sided by men stringing their bows, and a bunch of dumb sparrows blissfully unaware of the carnage about to unfold.

Rather than dumb sparrows, I interpret them to be the lesser brothers of the massive and improbable bird that hurtles downward from far above them. This creature, or construct, or abomination - this phenomenon of imagination - is composed of flesh made metal and metal made flesh, clockwork and feathers and bellows and lungs all heated to a sullen glow, a meteor shedding altitude for speed. 

The sparrows chirp lightly in recognition as the fallen satellite hits the ground just before unfurling it's wings - it is here that the listener realizes that this bird is meant to fly in thicker skies than those we know. The deepest troughs of our atmosphere are hard and featureless vacuum to this thing. It flies instead under the surface of the Earth, skipping and gliding along the thermals of the mantle, spinning and diving through magma and diamond alike, then climbing from time to time to broach the enamel-thin surface of our world.  It erupts from below in gouts of pulverized granite and feldspar, basking in near-silence before plunging back into the crust. 

But then, around 3:45 in the playback, something goes dreadfully wrong. Whether the earthbird is damaged or ill is unknown. But the rhythm of its wings is altered, and not for the better. Was it shot by some wary guardsman as it toyed with the surface world?  Are there predators lurking in the stony fathoms below? Or was this no more than the aging of a plaything put to use more rigorous than it could sustain?  No matter, for now there is a battle afoot. 

The battle is fought heartbeat by stuttering heartbeat, the bird swooping core-ward and back, perhaps seeking to fuse its broken parts in the heat of Earth's molten womb. But the mending is imperfect. And now the crippled beast must fight more furiously through the crushing strata.

Fight it does. And though the song ends, the listener knows that this combat will continue until the core grinds to a halt, solidifying in the final inevitable chill. 

Chirpity-chirp.

--Benny Snaxxx

--Steve Kilian

Listening to Sunn O)))

Why I listen to Monster Magnet