When Clowns go Bad

the right to what now?

2006-08-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

Who's clowning who?

Anger with lack of weight-loss surgery grows

"Two Nova Scotians say they're the victims of discrimination because there's no weight-loss surgery available in the province."

PentWhistle says, "wha-?"

Discrimination? Come come now. If you are kept from the normal course of life due to discriminatory interference, then you may qualify as a discriminatee. However, weight-loss surgery, last I checked, isn't a right of life (and according to the Thick-Headed, much Bemakeupped PM Harper, neither is water).

Anger as a response? I hope these two don't drive.

-PentWhistle

Evil Clowns and Curses

2006-07-18T02:05:00.000-07:00

While Pentwhistle was perusing Deuteronomy 28:49, the Nasty Harlequin's dot-connecting noodle swirled with thoughts of nations under the banner of the Eagle...

49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. 52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the LORD your God is giving you.

53 Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities.

Sound like anyone we know?

--PentWhistle

clowns of all colours

2006-07-10T16:25:00.000-07:00

Christian Plutocrats

a list to add to the infamy of Mammonic Cultists.

the short list:
Rev. Pat Robertson
Dr James C Dobson
Rev. D. James Kennedy
Alan Sears
Rev. Donal Wildman
Rev. Jerry Falwell
Tim & Beverly LaHaye.

ick!

--PentWhistle

Trickster Roll-Call

2006-07-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

Calling all Clowns

A cavalcade of some of the World's Wilder Wanderers: the creators, teachers, mischief-makers and fire-stealers.

Spider - NE Woodlands
Hare - Plains & Great Lakes
Coyote - W & SW, Crow
Raven - Pacific NW & Inuit
Bugs Bunny - Pop Culture
Loki - Norse
Medechiibelau - Pulau
Letao - Marshall Islands
Olifat - Chuuk(Truk) & Yap
Annecy - West Indies
Spider Anansi - West Africa
Robin Goodfellow, Puck - England
Kaulu - Polynesia
Wemicus - Timigami Ojibwe
Qat - Banks Ilsands
Amaguo - Inuit
Nanabozho (Wenabozho) - Ojibwe, Chippewa, Algonquin
Chulyen (Crow) - Nootka, Tanaina
Guguyni (Raven) - Nootka, Tanaina
One-tail-of-Clear-Hair (Opossum) - Catawba
First-Scolder (Coyote) - Plains, Chelan, Wasco
Unktomi (Iktomi) (Spider) - Lakota Plains
Azeban - NE Abenaki
Cunawabi - Great Basin
Taqwus -
Cin-an-ev (Wolf) - Ute
Blue Jay - NW, Chinook, Coos, Tilamook
Ti Malice - Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Lesser Antilles
Bamapana - Murnging N. Australia
Wisagatcak (Wisakedjak) - Cree
Queen Mab - England
Saynday - Kiowa
Rabbit - SE, Creek
Kmukamch - California Modoc
Yehl - Tlingit
Yo - Bamara
Marawa (Spider) - Melanesia
Legba - Haiti, West Africa
Yurugy (Pale Fox) - Sudanes & Malinese Dagon
Alyosha Propovich - Russia
Kumiho (9-tailed Fox) - Korea
Monkey - Mayan
Joker - Pop Culture
Wolverine - Labrador

also
Mouse
Frog
Mink

evil clown quotes

2006-07-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

or harlequins as author, harlequills d'hauteur.

from A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.

about three-quarters of the way into the story.
--
Ishvar shook his head sadly. "Why are business people so heartless? With all their money, they still look unhappy."

"It's a disease without a cure," said Dina. "Like cancer. And they don't even know they have it."
--

"The lives of the poor were rich in symbols..."

--

-PentWhistle

How about this for starters.

2006-07-06T14:56:00.000-07:00

An Evil Clown's guide to deconstructionism, and recycling.

Hexagram 49 - Ko - Revolution (Molting)

The trigram above TUI - The Joyous, Lake [younger daughter]
The trigram below LI- The Clinging, FIre [elder daughter]
from the Wilhelm/Baynes version:

The Chinese character for this hexagram means in its original sense an animal’s pelt, which is changed in the course of the year by molting. From this the word is carried over to apply to the “moltings” in political life, the great revolutions connected with changes of governments.

The two trigrams making up the hexagram are the same two that appear in K’uei, OPPOSITION (38), that is, the two younger daughters, Li and Tui. But while there the elder of the two daughters is above, and what results is essentially only an opposition of tendencies, here the younger daughter is above. The influences are in actual conflict, and the forces conflict each other like fire and water (lake), each trying to destroy the other. Hence the idea of revolution.

THE JUDGEMENT

REVOLUTION. On your own day
You are believed
Supreme success,
Furthering through perseverance.
Remorse disappears.

Political revolutions are extremely grave matters. They should be undertaken only under stress of direct necessity, when there is no other way out. Not everyone is called to this task, but only the man who has the confidence of the people, and even he only when the time is ripe. he must then proceed in the right way so that he gladdens the people and, by enlightening them, prevents excesses. Furthermore, he must be quite free of selfish aims and must really relieve the need of the people. Only then does he have nothing to regret.

Times change, and with them their demands. Thus the seasons change in the course of the year. In the world cycle also there are spring and autumn in the life of peoples and nations, and these call for social transformations.

THE IMAGE

Fire in the lake: the image of REVOLUTION
Thus the superior man
Sets the calendar in order
And makes the seasons clear.

Fire below and the lake above combat and destroy each other. So too in the course of the year a combat takes place between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, eventuating in the revolution of the seasons. Man masters these changes in nature by noting their regularity and marking off the passage of time accordingly. In this way order and clarity appear in the apparently chaotic changes of the seasons, and man is able to adjust himself in advance to the demands of the different times.

[the lines, read from the bottom upwards, are either Nine, a straight line, or Six, a broken line.]

THE LINES
Nine at the beginning means:
Wrapped in the hide of a yellow cow.

Changes ought to be undertaken only when there is nothing else to be done. Therefore at first the utmost restraint is necessary. One must become firm in one’s mind, control oneself - yellow is the color of the mean, and the cow is the symbol of docility - and refrain from doing anything for the time being, because any premature offensive will bring evil results.

Six in the second place means:
When one’s own day comes, one may create revolution.
Starting brings good fortune. No blame.
When we have tried in every way to bring about reforms, but without success, revolution becomes necessary. But such a thorough going upheaval must be carefully prepared. There must be available a man who has the requisite abilities and who possesses public confidence. To such a man we may well turn. This brings good fortune and is not a mistake. The first thing to be considered is our inner attitude toward the new condition that will inevitably come. We have to go out to meet it, as it were. Only in this way can it be prepared for.

Nine in the third place means:
Starting brings misfortune.
Perseverance brings danger.
When talk of revolution has gone the rounds three times,
One may commit himself,
And men will believe him.

When change is necessary, there are two mistakes to be avoided. One lies in excessive haste and ruthlessness, which brings disaster. The other lies in excessive hesitation and conservatism, which are also dangerous. Not every demand for change in the existing order should be heeded. On the other hand, repeated and well-founded complaints should not fail of a hearing. When talk of change has come to one’s ears three times, and has been ordered well, he may believe and acquiesce in it. Then he will meet with belief and will accomplish something.

Nine in the fourth place means:
Remorse disappears. Men believe him.
Changing the form of government brings good fortune.

Radical changes require adequate authority. A man must have inner strength as well as influential position. What he does must correspond with a higher truth and must not spring from arbitrary or petty motives; then it brings great good fortune. If a revolution is not founded on such inner truth, the results are bad, and it has no success. For in the end men will support only those undertakings which they feel instinctively to be just.

Nine in the fifth place means:
The great man changes like a tiger.
Even before he questions the oracle
He is believed.

A tigerskin, with its highly visible black stripes on a yellow ground, shows its distinct pattern from afar. It is the same with a revolution brought about by a great man: large, clear guiding lines become visible, understandable to everyone. Therefore he need not first consult the oracle, for he wins the spontaneous support of the people.

Six at the top means:
The superior man changes like a panther.
The inferior man molts in the face.
Starting brings misfortune.
To remain persevering brings good fortune.

After the large and fundamental problems are settled, certain minor reforms, and elaborations of these, are necessary. These detailed reforms may be likened to the equally distinct but relatively small marks of the panther’s coat. As a consequence, a change also takes place among the inferior people. In conformity with a new order, they likewise “molt.” This molting, it is true, does not go very deep, but that is not to be expected. We must be satisfied with the attainable. If we should go too far and try to achieve too much, it would lead to unrest and misfortune. For the object of a great revolution is the attainment of clarified, secure conditions ensuring a general stabilization on the basis of what is possible at the moment.

Criminal Corporate Entities

2006-06-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

2005's most reviled

These corporate criminals have reneged on all responsibilities.

Caterpillar
Chevron
Coca-Cola
Dow Chemicals
Dyncorp/CSC
Ford Motor Company
KBR (Kellogg, Brown & Root - subsidiary of Halliburton)
Lockheed Martin
Monsanto
Nestle USA
Philip Morris (Altria)
Pfizer
Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux
Wal-Mart

Notice how boldly Ford, Nestle, Altria and Wal-Mart earn their place in Pluto's favour.

Pluto's collection Plate

2006-06-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Corporation	Chief Industry
General Motors	automobile manufacturer
Wal-Mart	retailer
Exxon Mobil	energy
Ford Motor	automobile manufacturer
Daimler Chrysler	automobile manufacturer
Mitsui	energy, et al
Mitsubishi	energy, et al
Toyota Motor	automobile manufacturer
General Electric	electronics
Itochu	finance
Royal Dutch - Shell	energy
Sumimoto	energy
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone	telecommunications
Marubeni	finance
AXA	Insurance
IBM	electronics
BP - Amoco	energy
Citigroup	finance
Volkswagen	automobile manufacturer
Nippon Life Insurance	insurance
Siemens	energy, telecommunications
Allianz	insurance
Hitachi	electronics
Matsushita Electric Industries	electronics
Nissha Iwai	mining
ING Group	finance
AT & T	telecommunications
Altria (Philip Morris )	food, beverage, tobacco
Sony	electronics, finance, media
Deutsche Bank	finance
Boeing	aircraft manufacturer
Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance	insurance
Honda Motor	automobile manufacturer
E. On	energy
Toshiba	electronics & engineering
Bank of America	finance
Fiat	automobile manufacturer & finance
Nestle	food & beverage
SBC Communications	telecommunications
Credit Suisse	finance
Hewlett-Packard	electronics
Fujitsu	electronics
Metro	retailer
Sumimoto Life Insurance	insurance
Tokyo Electric Power	energy
Kroger	retailer
Total Fina Elf	energy
NEC	electronics
State Farm Insurance	insurance

turning the corporate tables

2006-06-29T17:43:00.000-07:00

or, are these clowns serious?

PentWhistle's Pent Whistle is sliding ever upwards in mobility, as he learns whom are the kings and queens of Pluto's hierarchy of Corporate Temples, and whom of them require a Fool for their court, to lay bare the follies of the Herald - Marketing, the Town Crier - Media Outlet, the Soldiers - Armies.

to begin with, this:
they rule

to continue...

...to be continued

--PentWhistle

why you cannot be trusted

2006-04-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

or, an argument in favour of gun control

This evil clown has nothing on the rest of you all:

A recent survey:
They report that more than 80,000 Americans needed to be treated in hospital for injuries caused by lawn mowers in 2004.

If 80, 000 Americans have injured themselves in the act of gardening, can they be trusted with anything?

--PentWhistle

when time is money

2006-04-07T22:47:00.000-07:00

an evil clown's treatise on currency.

Time = Money
Money = Time

Don't believe it? It's the foundation of our economic system.

People are paid weekly, biweekly, or monthly in denominations of dollars per hour and dollars per year.

dollar per year. That is an equation of money and time.
$30000/year
1 year = $30 000

The insidious measure is the calculation of interest, calculating money owed based on the elapsing of time, usually in terms of a percentage of the principal.

Interest is charged on loans, investments, taxes, deposits, mortgages, and countless other interactions. Paying for elapsing time...

May as well charge us for the air we breathe at this point, so ridiculous it is.

--PentWhistle

what fools

2006-04-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

April 2nd is ever the day for Frightful Fools

In case you felt that the Foolishness of the First and the spring-blown wind-bags manage to fill the well with frolick to make up for the mundanity of the rest of the year's day-to-day trudgery.

but, alas, it is not to be. For foolishness, and bending the arrogant, egocentric, hubristic over for a fleet foot up the fundament is a duty, all year, every day.

to begin, a boot to arrears:

All this talk about security - what do we mean, exactly?
Has it evolved from the Latin securus, meaning "free from care?"
Of course not. Look how much we care about our security.
Perhaps it has evolved from the Latin securis, meaning "[headman's] axe."
that's much more in keeping with the "security culture" that breeds around us.

You ain't fooling me with your fast-talking, head-spin doctors.

If fools be wise, they care not for your axiom of security.

--PentWhistle
securis

the number of the beast

2006-03-28T10:05:00.000-08:00

neither John of Padmos, R.A. Heinlein or Iron Maiden would flip over this

According to the visionary John of Padmos, a nasty clown if ever there was one, in the Bible's "Revelation" there is some reference to the number of the beast marking those who are allowed to trade and those not. The number is reckoned at 666.

What if we've been reading it wrong all along?

what ubiquitous 666isms are there in our trade-frenzied world?

The film Naked suggests that the three spaces on the omnipresent bar codes are the equivalent.

I suggest that it is something else altogether.

$9.99 - only upside down.

Nothing is ever what is appears to be. What could be more devillish, demonic, and beastial than pernicious, deliberate smoke and mirrors?

$10 is never ten dollars. It's $9.99, keeping the rivers of "copper" pennies flowing. Or there's some level of tax or other that shifts the price beyond the innocent price tag suggesting $10.

999 - the number of the beast - pay at your peril.

--Not Jack

a little cackle for your crack

2006-03-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

put a smile in your cheeks.

not all of us are evil clowns from one moment to the next, but between us all, there is a never-ending cavalcade of evil clownishness.

a story a mischeivous mite told humblest PentWhistle this very afternoon:

"I wear my bike helmet when I go to visit my friend downtown [in a corporate tower]. People in the elevator think I'm a bike courier and ask about my helmet. I tell them that it's my elevator helmet [knocks it with a knuckle], because, you know, elevators..."

the rest of the trip is spent in uncomfortable silence.

Blessed are the makers of all dairy products.

--PentWhistle

the "I'd"s of March

2006-03-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

I'd a this and I'd a that - the impotence of past-pluto-perfect

verb tension

I'm sure George Orwell, a Haughty Harlequin, Acerbic Acrobat, Verbal Vermillion, would agree.
things don't mean what they meant.

torture no longer includes certain acts of torture in its definition.

democracy no longer includes rule by the common people (if it ever did).

freedom includes the removal of freedoms, and rights.

united (as in states) doesn't include the notion of togetherness.

terrorism excludes huge acts of terrorism (such as state-sponsored militarism).

I don't which way is up.

--PentWhistle

vernal vernacular

2006-03-20T11:18:00.000-08:00

tis clowning season, well and truly now

does anyone remember the groundhog? Remember that little rascal, sitting up and not seeing his shadow - the day itself poised midway between the Longest Night and the tipping of the balance towards the light.

if this mark's the beginning of Spring, the day of the Fool merely a fortnight away, then what was the Groundhog all about?

the shadow.

the Groundhog is the beast of the underworld, looking out of its hole. If the Sun is at its zenith in Summer at the Solstice, and Nadir is at night in the Winter, on the Solstice, then the Groundhog is looking toward's Winter if it sees its shadow, and towards Spring if it doesn't.

festival of the sundial, and the shadowgazing gopher.

I mean, if you're going to observe a holiday, we may as well observe it right. There are huge gatherings on this day at the Mayan pyramids in the Yucatan, to watch the serpent's slithering shadow slide up the steps to its home at the apex.

Yet here, it is a day as any other. Many celebrations happened this past weekend, to account for the work week.

This is our day of balance, weighed against the Autumnal equivalent, poised above our swing into the year's night. And so, once again we've emerged from the darkness, to visit the light. And with it renewed energy.

and with it - war - maybe tomorrow, on Tiw's day, in March while the Sun is in Aries.
Or on the 28th, around the time of elections overseas.

And so, with the emergence of our collective spirits from the winter of our discontent, we wake to the chinese year of the fire dog, arise into the first step aground after a three month journey through the Abyss of Winter's long, cold nights - as if anything else united Canadians in spirit - ready to regain our legs.

and jump for Joy.

Spring is Fool season. Look to springs, in Jacks-in-their-boxes, holding bulbous eyes to novelty glasses, in sticks-a-po-go, and coils of festive streamers. Such harlequinry is all about the distraction. You know the drill, "nothing to see here. Ooh, shiny."

This, as all other days that fall upon all people, the Solstices, the Equinoxes, the risings and settings of celestial bodies, are deserving of a holiday, or a week say.

For the Equinoxes and Solstices and their midpoints - that's eight more holidays a year. make them two days to acknowledge the end of season and the beginning of season.

Dec 21 - Jan 1
Solstice and New Year's - we get the whole twelve nights off.
Festival of the Abysmal

Feb 2 - day of the Shadowgazing Gopher
pair this with Chinese New Year and the days in between and that could be a fortnight of celebration

Mar 20 - Equinox
day of the balance tipping upward
Feast of the Fertile

May 1 - midspring
Feast of the Fertile

June 21 - Solstice
midharvest

Aug 1 - mid summer
Feast of Fire

Oct 31 - Nov 2
Days of Souls

Add to this July 3 to Aug 11 as the Dog Days of Summer, owing to the timing of the heliacal rising of the dog star, Sirius. And that gives us a year with something to celebrate, instead of moments when our monies are traded for things other than the usual.

Welcome to Spring. The season of the Fool, and the playground for the Evilest of Clowns, who resemble Fools in many respects, but one.

They don't like the same kind of fun.

Leave your old ways of thinking in the blackest Abyss of Winter, and be reborn to think anew, open to a different method of living, because to carry on the legacy of the lifestyles that have lead to our dependence on bloodshed is sheer and utter tomfoolery.

--PentWhistle

Symptoms of Evil Clownishness

2006-03-19T18:19:00.000-08:00

telltale signs if you've got intentions divine or just a naughty mind.

evil clown symptom #23: they spoil the ending to every story.

Usually by giving away the murderer after one is well and truly committed to sleuthing it out for oneself, for example.
the rotten rascally roustabouts.

evil clown symptom #401b: they won't play along.

Proof again against magic of all sorts, the evil clown refuses to pick a card, any card, throw the juggling club gently or surrender the stage.
characteristically churlish clowns.

evil clown symptom #2: they point out the very centre of denial without fail.

Usual with an innocent (but who's kidding who?) affectation, along the lines of, "aspartame gives you brain disease," to the diet soft drink sipping sycophant.
selective sinister seducer.

evil clown symptom #5: they always get the last laugh.

More of a melodramatically mad mouahahahahahahahahahaha with lots of the wringing of the big, white gloves.

toot toot

-- PentWhistle

whatever happened to opportunistic hippies?

2006-03-16T21:02:00.001-08:00

how the "me" generation fled to "de" generation

The Dirty Hippies.

Not all of the hippies are dirty. And not all of the hippies who happen to be dirty are Dirty Hippies. The dirty hippies to whom I refer as "The Dirty Hippies" are those who rode the swell of sincere interest of ending the wars overseas purely out of self-interest.

The Dirty Hippies are those who followed the trend, took advantage of the free love and punch of available intoxicants, and living in the then most prosperous nation on earth, were catered to since before they were born by television which began advertising diapers very soon after the war.

And so on, through "30 Something" and Phil Collins and a wash of atrocity dumped upon our poor unsuspecting pates on the way past the decadence of the 1970s, or the degeneracy of the 1980s into the darkness of the 1990s to the unbridled calamity of the 2000s.

The Dirty Hippies have traded in the possibility of Greatness for the disappointment of cultural navel-gazing, superficial dilution of our narratives, and rush to hubristic fulfilment of fleeting fickle interest regardless of the cost

to others.

hence with the incarceration, torture, bloodshed.

thanks for nothing.

--PentWhistle

p.s. Phil Collins? I mean, really, what the hell's the deal?

do you theenk I'm keedink?

2006-03-16T20:48:00.000-08:00

just in case you thought I was j-j-joking

Despot George II of NC of America, had some of these words for his nation on September 11th 2001. The importance of the dollar, and our economic enslavement laid bare...

read on,

if you dare.

"The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women, military and federal workers; moms and dads, friends and neighbors."

"...we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity..."

" The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight, and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business, as well."

It wasn't a long speech.

businessmen and women and their secretaries riding the same breath as military, federal workers, moms dads friends and neighbours. such special distinction.

Yet, are they not the front lines of the warfare of business, or business of warfare? With an untenable lifestyle floated on a swelling ocean of credit turned to debt turned to abyss of driving endless walking-distances, can there be a question?

business as usual - keep spending - keep counting money - keep shifting it around no matter the cost.

the cost.

keep shifting it around, because the way things works, all moving money gets skimmed, whether a tax, fee, tariff, levee, charge, surcharge, gratuity, interest or profit.

moving money ends up in the same inverted funnel, like an upside-down tornado, sucking all of the financial tokens of the majority up, away into the inaccessible stratosphere, where it is exchanged for opulence.

business as usual is the rallying cry of the war effort at home. Except that there's no war going on, no declarations, just an invasion, hostilities, and bloodshed. Call it war if you will, it's all in the name of lethargy and disinterest.

--PentWhistle

$top making $en$e

2006-03-16T09:44:00.000-08:00

To the declining doll heir: you're oh, so much newer replacement bourests onto the [ob]scene

such a simple symbol, no?

so eloquent, familiar, and ubiquitous. Yet, what the hell does it mean?

It may be the combination of U and S - it may be a combination of P and S (from the peso) - or it could be derived from the number 8 or it's the pillars of hercules.

US - PS - 8 - I I - $

The double-stroke dollar sign (with two lines - damned ascii - can't find it anywhere) - the two-line dollar sign is, of course

Snakes and Ladders

the adrenalyne pumping highs, the suicidal lows, the soaring and the plunging, the climb up the corporate ladder, and the precipitous slide down the throat of the snake, the belly of the beast.

what, then, exactly, is the economic dynamic represented by this snake, and this ladder?

is the snake the devil of eden? Is the ladder the tree of knowledge? If these potent christian symbols are the foundation of the economic system - the Fall from Grace - the why is it so surprising that economics are the demon to which we sacrifice all of our better nature?

$ - most jobs involving counting someone else's money

$ - there are no secular holidays that require all businesses to close (outside of emergencies)

$ - you get what you pay for [terrifying, considering]

finish these cliches appropriately:

a penny saved is...

pennywise,,,

now at the low low price of...

money makes the world...

$ - try living a day, a single, solitary, lonely day, from dawn until dusk (or rise until collapse), without spending one, single, solitary cent - without talking about money, without referring to money, without cutting a cheque, paying a bill, looking at a receipt - $

$ - how many days have you passed without thinking for a single solitary moment about the Sun, or the Moon, or the stars, or the back of your head, or how to love your heart as it keeps the beat - $

--PentWhi$tle

evil clowns abide...

2006-03-12T16:32:00.000-08:00

how to get laughs from a tough room

revile clowns:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/howardluken/AngstotheClown.html

business leaders in times of war

2006-03-09T08:29:00.000-08:00

how to butter-up dough-boys

from Reuters:
"Tim Hortons is heading into a war zone to serve the country's troops a taste of home."

referring specifically to Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

this is the beauty of it - Tim Horton's, long-standing institution throughout most of Canada, now dropped like a red brick bomb on the unsuspecting conquered... uh, citizens of Afghanistan, who can now line up to get a double-double coffee and doughnut for what amounts to a few months salary, provided your means of living hasn't been incinerated.

and just think of the calories! A Boston creme doughnut (will it be renamed the Kabuli Creme?) is just the thing for the civilian on the run.

mmmmm, doughnuts.

who'd'a thought that Canadian imperialism would manifest itself as a chain of doughnut stores in the wake of coalition bloodshed. When do the Iraqui, Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian, Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and North Korean franchise open up?

how many are there in the US?

--PentWhistle

calling for a real state funeral

2006-03-08T09:12:00.000-08:00

end to boreders

I say...

let's have a real state funeral, bury the state,
say a little eulogy, like, "it's been nice..."
and then throw the dirt over it, dust to dust and so forth.

we will stop listening to pernicious despotism then?

--PentWhistle

state funerals are the ultimate comedy

2006-03-07T12:39:00.000-08:00

or, how to gift a horse-mouth in the look

Toronto officers stage emotional tribute to police horse killed while on duty

lest we show any emotion for the dozens of people intimidated, pushed, corralled or injured by the horse, or its teary-eyed rider.

sniff sniff.

I laugh at this. I say let's all celebrate with authentic steak tartare - raw horse meat for all policemen, as I'm guessing it's already a staple.

no sympathy? no, never, not while police dogs and horses are part of the brotherhood of police, for whom the rest of us are simply outsiders. Doubt my assertion? 1000 cops showed up to bury a horse.

how many show up to funerals for victims killed as a result of police action/inaction?

take a wild guess.

and keep on laughing.

--PentWhistle

Squallor, Squallid, Squall, the Winds...

2006-03-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

a rant a day keeps everyone at a safe distance, at the very least

on a ramble about the backstreets late last evening, I noticed that the cherry blossoms have already speckled the gnarly branches to which they cling before their ultimate leap into the gentle descent like so much pink snow.

they started in February.

This is the earliest sign of spring in this place. the pink snow that counters the frozen hexagonally symmetrical crystals, in their cascade from the clouds, gifts of heaven cut out of folded vapor, and sent to earth as a sign that the divine likes us, and has a very strange sense of humour.

hence, send in the clowns.

didn't you know? clowns are a religious order. you'll hear passionate denials to the contrary, from clowns, and evil clowns alike. Maybe not crunkers.

the uniform, though varied, and multifaced, as the diamond argyle of the troubadour, is recognizable - colourful gendreless comically exaggerated perversions of the ruling class - they are truly the fools that have chased the moneylenders out of the temple. The moneylenders, bankers and insurancers, spend much of their time indoors, in offices, automobiles and homes.

they have been chased out of the temple.

the fool, the hobo hero, wanders the tracks under the wide skies of the great outdoors, and remains in a temple of divine construction, not of divine inspiration.

and with that, the fool travels far and wide, and brings with them stories - and at the heart of every one of those stories is hope.

now the evil clown, that's a whole other tale. Ironic twists into cruelty and subjugation, playing with the material as if it were symbolic, and the immaterial as if it were paramount. This can be comical, in the tragi-comical sense, when so much blood and so many bones go into telling their stories.

and the evil evil clown, is a clown of a different pallor. More aware that the religion of clownishness is neither redemptive nor sacrificial. It is a mystery, hidden in the deepest darkest abyss, and ironically, comically, ridiculously, that very abyss, the ineffable, unnamable, unspeakable void, inhabits each and every one of our souls.

a shard of the abyss sits within us all, and we can explore it internally beyond our heart's content, beyond the duration of two lifetimes. and it has depths that can swallow a person whole, yet it is contained within.

what strange antinomy. Is that what is meant by Shiva's dance?

guess I'll cut in and ask.

in the meanwhile, seek ye the laughably ridiculous - because the sincerely ridiculous have taken over.

the best thing about the abyss is that nothing's better.

--PentWhistle

Professional Prophecy

2006-03-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

or, how to get paid for guesswork

to profess has associated meanings: taking a vow, declare or acknowledge something openly or publicly

professionals are a group of people avowed to a common purpose.

what if that vow is to money and greed, and naught else? What would that look like, do you imagine, an avowal to the god of money?

Pluto, according to our Roman ancestry, is the god of money, who also happens to rule over everything else under the earth, incuding seeds and roots, fungi, and for three months out of the year, the goddess of fertility, his chosen (read "abducted") bride, Porsiphina (Persephone is Greek, lest we mix our metaphors).

Then, to what have money-avowed professionals, those seeking ever-increasing recompense, also bound themselves? (Bankers call them "bonds" for a reason, no?)

We could consider the evidence, if such is the case, particularly in the land of the greed, the Calamitous Empire sandwiched between the Great White North space above, and the land of Tomorrow to the South.

Wherein around and about the 1929, October 24th to 29th, ending with the announcement by the Calamitous Empire's ruler on July 2nd, 1932, there was a crash into economic devastation.

Close to half of the 25, 000 banks in the Fallen Empire had failed by 1933.

As if this wasn't making matters bad enough, millions of agricultural acres of dried up and blew away in the Dust Bowl of 1930 to 1941. Too much wheat and not enough bison was at the heart of the matter.

With the introduction of World War II, the Calamitous Empire recovered from its financial folly, and developed the means to end the war, in Japan at least, much to its benefit. For the World War had brought the world together, to be bound by trade.

With a global market upon which to prey - uh, play, the Calamitous Empire grew in its recovery, a little arms trading and war profiteering nonwithstanding, until the end of its twentieth century, 1999, when it marked the longest uninterrupted profit in recorded history.

Interesting, no? Then, a recap:

1929 - stock market crash
1930 - Pluto Discovered - Dust Bowl
1932 - New Deal announced
1941 - Pearl Harbour
1945 - Plutonium bombs
1979 - Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit to come closer to Earth
1999 - Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit to return to further orbit
and the end of the Calamitous' Empire's economic streak.

What do war and money have in common? Well, again, turning to our literate latinates, Scorpio, that eye in the sky, is ruled by both Pluto and Mars - money and war.

Tuesday is the day named for the god of war (Tiw in Norse, Mars in French)
October 24 to 29th, the Sun is in Scorpio, ruled by Pluto and Mars.
and Plutonium has become the ultimate spear, beyond Dread and Fear.

And if this money, sacrificed with a crash,
and seed, sacrificed in a bowl,
and dead, sacrificed by suicide, starvation and war were appeasements to this displeased Pluto

and so much spilled blood and astronimic probings are our homage to Mars

then upon what, and whom, have we been warring since the First Deal was struck, back when Julius Caesar introduced Libra to the sky, stealing Scorpio's claws, and instituted the Republic, and its calendar?

to what else have we bound ourselves with the Second Deal, renegotiated as appropriate for an Empire, even a Calamitous one. The Romans were ever people of the land, and they knew the value of wheat, bread and circuses.

The month of February is derived from Februus, a festival of the underworld, life relegated to the wintry depths of the earth, and is the time of Pluto.

the Planet was discovered February 18 1930, and his orbit crossed Neptune's February 7th 1979 and February 11 1999.

what a big hmmm that all is, isn't it.

so what's with the chicken in every pot?

--PentWhistle

what's all the fighting about

2006-03-01T23:07:00.000-08:00

a late night occurrance

I just had a thought,

is it the war on terror or the war on terra?

and why is it the long war?

words don't mean what i think they mean

--PentWhistle

Random Ramblings and Rambunctions unction

2006-03-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

wherein all this seems to be pointing at one, big, nothing

if Prometheus were really "foreknowledge" or "forethought" would he really have brought man the fire of the Gods? Even with the Vulture ripping his liver out - hell of a way to mark the passing of the days - would he have delivered fire into our hands had he seen coke ovens and smelters, fat rendering plants, jet exhaust, automobile pollution-congestion-obsession?

and the great burning nuclear question: just when will we have had enough, and cease our progress towards... well, progress anyway.

If fire is a metaphor for will, for the rod, the phallic linear projection into the world from within - regardless of one' s gendre, trans-defined or what-have-you - then presumably we had existed previously without it.

without will, without linear movement, what were we? settled dwellers? Agrarian sloths? We never could have cooked a goose without fire. Nor smelted bronze, iron, and electronics, ploughed fields or drop the bomb.

where would we be without it, but with earth, air, water, spirit, or in the chinese system, metal, water, wood and earth?

body, mind, heart and soul without will. A satiety in comfortable circumstances, is my guess. Epithemeus, "afterthought" gave all of the survival tools to all of the animals, leaving people with, well, very few attributes, it was believed.

thus the theft of fire.

if fire was to give us the edge, then lo, what an edge! Genocide of entire species, willfully, and with unimaginable vigor. The dodo. The passenger pigeon. The great auk. The bison. Atlantic cod. Sperm whales.

what was Prometheus forethinking?

If the terms forethought and afterthought are interpreted differently, they may, indeed, refer to the front of the head and the back of the head, which in Qabbalistic systems represent the conscious and the subconscious.

Thus, Epithemius worked in the subconscious, from the back of the head, from the visual centre, and intuition; Prometheus worked in the conscious, the front of the head, the telencephalon, the Ego - the fiery lion. Herein, robbing fire from the gods takes on a new meaning.

the act was one of hubris, (hence the severity of the punishment), yet also appears to rob the gods of their part in our mind - they fell from their role in our forethoughts, and fell from illumination into the depths of our subconscious, where they have ever since been regarded as an afterthought.

--PentWhistle

What happens when one is no longer oneself?

2006-03-01T00:32:00.000-08:00

or, down the rabbit, whole

Whilst regarding myself in a mirror of sorts, mine very own reflection shattered into countless pieces, each a shard of self, in hologramic imitation.

does self-"ish" refer to the state of being somelike like oneself? As in kitten"ish" or p"ish"ed.

If you can be self-ish in such a manner, does that necessarily mean that you're beside yourself?

is self-cannibalisation the only way to be truly full of yourself?

do bankers charge themselves self-interest?

are turtles and snails self-contained?

is anyone?

are all dinners for one for self-serving?

or is that about playing tennis against a wall?

i ask myself these questions because it's self-satisfying.

--PentWhistle

bending time to make a clown out of us all

2006-02-27T18:02:00.000-08:00

how to use your calendar for fun and conspiracy-theorising

The Gregorian Calendar, accepted by most countries and cultures as the international standard, repeats itself every 28 years (7 days of the week, which are thrown off by the leap year every 4 years, so 4x7 is 28 - see, math can be fun, or not).

So, curiously, we note things like this:

2001 (first year of the new millenium)
two towers (the World Trade Centre) fall in a flaming cloud to the ground.

1973 (28 years earlier)
the World Trade Centre is dedicated

1945 (28 years earlier)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki - twin towers of flaming cloud into the sky.

1917 (28 years earlier)
US enters WWI

and I says, hmmmmm. What does time, the calendar, military might and global trade have in common?

ask the Plutocrats - they know more that's been buried than they let on.

...stay tuned for further misadventurous underpinnings...

--PentWhistle

NASA has gone and done it.

2006-02-27T18:00:00.000-08:00

from the files of "What were they thinking."

On January 19, NASA launched the New Horizons probe to Pluto, which will arrive in 2015.

Is it wise to send Plutonium to Pluto???

--PentWhistle

what's with the ides of march anyway, Jules?

2006-02-27T17:52:00.000-08:00

Or, haven't we all been here before?

I seem to remember something from my youth, my younger days - waxing poetic back to the tail end of Winter in the glorious year of 2003, in which the US media[tm] propagated the attention on the planet Mars with constant updates as to what the NASA remote-controlled toy was up to.

Mars, the Roman god of War, his name echoing from the box, from every station. The Prez himself, the man with the top of the pyramidal wedge, declared his intent to spend more time and money in trying to reach him.

Mars, by the way, has two moons, his two Dogs of War (remember Richard III? Their names are Fear and Dread (notable synonyms to terror, one may note, if one wishes to note such a ones as these).

Then, in March (the month named after Mars), on the 20th day, the beginning of Aries, the US began its "major combat operations" in the cradle of civilisation, and continued to salt the earth, by peppering it with depleted uranium munitions.

Ares is the Greek god of war, the astrological period is ruled by the planet mars.

and here we are again, the drums sounding about a country in the cradle of civilisation declared an enemy, and preparations begin as we approach March in the year 2006.

I understand that NASA currently has a probe orbiting Mars.

I'm sure we'll get to hear much about it.

--PentWhistle

in Celebration of Lethargy

2006-02-26T23:42:00.000-08:00

In which resurrected clownishness arouses suspicions from the Plutocratic minions.

Whatever that might suppose to mean.

This, the season, the greatest of momenta, as we swirl through the last gasps of Winter's whispy zephyrs towards the inescapable genuflecting that is Vernal bloom.

And amidst all of this, we remember the third anniversary of the madness turned to sadness in lands far away - because we refuse to stop driving everywhere, and wrapping our world in acres upon hectares of plastic doodads, gewgaws, knick-knacks and the shiny, as if this, somehow, would preserve the world as we know it.

It is to laugh.

May we ever celebrate our apathy. As lifestyle, it's the way to go. If you're going to slouch your way to inevitable demise, then do so with vigour and alacrity. It's what everyone's doing in the BIG CITY. You know the one I mean.

[wink wink]

If you're going to spend more time sitting down than breathing, then invest in a chair that will suit your lifestyle of deliberate somnolescence, and cushion your seated ends in decadent comfort. Vibrating, heating, massaging, reclining, with armrest, headrest, footrest. Ahhhh. Step one, it's already begun. Kick back, and enjoy the...

If you're going to spend more time sitting down, you may as well entertain your newly, proudly slothful lifestyle of the famously rich. What better way than by celebrating the human tradition of telling tales of learning and wonder around the campfire, with a eighty-one inch, HDTV? Yes, stories aplenty, and at a low low price, if you rent-to-own, or lease, or pay by some lay--away or other. You know the drill. Mmmm. Reclining, absorbing, then...

If you're going to spend more time sitting down and watching television, you'll need to alter your diet to suit your newest, settledest self. This demands a strict adherence to a diet of processed foods, factory-farm direct products and by-products, the fizzly, swizzly swill of the softest of soft drinks, you know the one I mean. No cheating. If you require sustenance between snacks, eat peanut butter, and plenty of it.

With a bit of foresight, the batteries in the universal remote controls can be replaced at a moment's notice should any system's failure dredge your attention out of the fog of prime-time mayhem to the deepest need to switch the story away to something else, something less audacious and smart with a fresh new twist on something or other.

This lifestyle is not for the faint of heart. It requires a strong healthy heart to continue to pump the accumulating fatty goodness through increasingly brittle, narrowing vessels just to make it through to middle age (if you live to be over a hundred).

However, it has its rewards.

You need barely ever use your own body's power again, with the exception of occasional trips to the bathroom (bedpans and catheters nonwithstanding, one must wash to keep from dying, which defeats the purpose of all this enjoyment of life in one's buttock-vibrating wonder hammock).

Ahhhhh.

Now, if you should have to move a distasteful distance (out of the house, for example), there is the celebration of self, known popularly as the automobile, with which one may travel as if coursing down an asphalt river into the drowsy surf, drifting gently on theta waves, watching the world pass by, only punctuated in passing by ubiquitous advertising instead of constant interruption.

With this, one may celebrate inertia while still moving about town, and all thanks to a little internal combustion. To work, for one must still pay for all of this. In such a case, you must use this prefabricated idea, as it will save you from formulating one of your own as has not be seen on TV: demand ergonomic standardisation, then you can get the really really cushy chairs, that recline, decline, incline and so forth.

Then, you can stare longingly into that beautiful monitor, sitting in your ergonomically buttock-massaging chair, in celebration of the Socratic dialogue, while typing furtively and frantically in a chat room.

Then, the wondrousness of the return to the comfort of one's home.

because, for some reason or other, the oil that all those bones are crushed for is somehow different from the gasoline in our tanks.

Ours is more refined.

--PentWhistle

Episode 14ac - the Marionettes of Mammon

2006-01-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

In which the distant diabolical Flabby Devil lets loose its minions of marketing.

from: Not Jack 3.1415926 - Taught Strings
by Mat the Hooplah, blump on a blog for Saint Seer of Tallow, who waxes postpoetic.

--continues--

The Third Marionette, dangling from slack strings, sped up at its approach to Evile Blanche the Evil Evil Clown.

She turned whiter than her normal pallor could have allowed for, against all expectation. Her pet Leum, unconscious, as well as Traught. Neither provided any further distraction for the Marionettes, or even the Flabby Devil himself, if he even felt distracted, or for that matter, anything.

The unstable Third Marionette, swirling white beyond the black, reached towards her, its undulant pseudopods reaching, grasping, as if to bridge the gap in the ceiling of a most profane chapel.

Blanche ducked its double-flailing at her, ill-timed and poorly conceived, and slid over to one side. The Third Marionette shifted off-balance, giving Blanche a moment to assess her situation.

beside the Third Marionette, the Fourth through Twelfth eyed her (if, indeed, the carefully scrutinizing orbits were eyes - might have been anything) with anticipatory cruelty. These were no mere mortal Marionettes. They had been willful, divine beings, dragged from their homes and caves and warrens and hives, strung up, and made to dance to the Flabby Devil's ever weakening understanding of the world around him, as he continues his slide into the lethargy of his lipidinous treachery.

Blache took in the scene with a glance:

the Fourth Marionette, rusted and scraping, screaming for reprieve from its blood-rusted coggings, reached out two serrated vices, each with multiple sharp edges within, at the end of long, telescoping appendages.

the Fifth Marionette, loud, hissing steam from the broken seams of its neglected body. Loose screws blew angry vapour, which emanated from the boiling roar in its deep belly to rest as a wispy cloud around its head and neck.

the Sixth Marionette, an imbalanced horror, splendidly smooth and blasphemous in her androgynous hermaphroditism. Plainly curved to resemble the most comely of human female forms, yet without the life breathing within, the inert mechanism was but a failed homunculus.

the Seventh Marionette, this one most disturbing, although Blanche could not say why. It hung lifeless at the end of heavy metal wires that remained taught, rigid and unmoving. It dangled to the Flabby Devil's left hand, off-centre, yet holding onto a verisimilitude of symmetry, yet its imbalanced appendages remained hidden within its own shadow.

the Eighth Marionette, a strong, willful and malicious device, armored and armed for combat, this one clearly had been added most recently, as its armor still retained its robust tight-fitting scales, the weapons their sharp points, honed to poisonous intent. This one, not broken as the others, eyed Blanche long and coldly with its distant black eyes, as empty as a starless sky, and about as reassuring.

the Ninth Marionette had all of its arrows, from crossbows mounted on and about its body, aimed at Blanche. She started slightly at seeing the bent tips and frayed feathers that made up the shafts of the rotted and beetle-pocked shafts. She had nothing to fear, except by accident. It was yet too far from her, and it wasn't nearly as unsettling as its predecessor.

the Tenth Marionette, a flailing urchin of long, mechanical arms and levers, unfolded and telescoped its many appendages towards one object it held loosely in one arm.

My wallet!

the Tenth Marionette used all of its digits to carefully open the wallet, extracting the slug, the button and the chocolate coin from it.

The Eleventh Marionette, the source of the Fourth Marionette's rust, it would seem, was leaking clear, opaque and dark fluids, spilling them onto the earth, which refused to ingest them. The stream slowly streamed across the ranks, adding a slippery medium to their already unnaturally imbalanced and shuddering motions.

the Twelfth Marionette, and the last, to the Flabby Devil's far left, stood in a growing pool of liquids, mostly from its predecessors endless leakage, itself slipping and sliding in it, unable to move in any direction, and only sinking deeper into its personal deluge.

As the Third Marionette finally rounded itself towards Blanche, she took quick action.

Evile Blanche, the Evil Evil Clown, scooted out of the Third Marionette's field of vision, leaving it to a dexter-sinister debate on whether to turn clockwise or counter-clockwise. By the time it had rounded on her once again, she hoped that her ruse had not been ill-conceived.

She had attached all of the Second Marionette's severed strings to her own appendages.

The Third Marionette regarded her briefly, and then turned away.

Phew.

Evile Blanche began to untie the string around her left hand, when she felt it pull her upwards suddenly, and with unexpected strength.

The Flabby Devil had just found his replacement for the unstrung Marionette.

Evile Blanche felt the chilling will enter her limbs through those light, almost imperceptible strings.

--to be continued--

Episode 14ab - more blabbity from the flabbity

2006-01-17T16:49:00.000-08:00

In which mammon's manipulated mechinatious marionettes mete out miasmatic misery.

from: Not Jack 3.141592 - Discordant and Discordduck
by Mat the Hooplah, trouble tale tweaker for Saint Seer of Tallow, herald of the sundered renderings, and remembered mutterings.

--continues--

"That's, um, unexpected," said Evile Blanche, the Evil Evil Clown, at the sight of her immobilised dragon, her pet Leum.

"unexpected?" gasped Traught. "What's going on? I mean, that's a dragon!"

"careful, Traught," cautioned Blanche, as she retreated away from the approaching marionettes, each one broken, or ill-repaired into an irregular cacophony of motion, stuttering after them. The First Marionette stepped lightly over Blanche's pet Leum's prone form, with a shudder of the Flabby Devil's smallest finger.

A loud, hollow, thunderous boom sounded behind them. Blanche's spirits sank (as if they could sink any further than here, atop the profane pyramid) even as she turned to confirm that the doors had indeed sealed them in.

aghast.

The Second Marionette approached, it was barrel-topped, with thick spikes jutting towards Blanche. She looked to all sides for a means of escape, a means of evasion, a means of defense.

even if that meant a sacrifice?

what voice was this?

"Did you say anything?" she demanded of the boy, who had curled up into a foetal position. "Traught!"

"No."

She looked back at the-

sacrifice

-at Traught.

sacrifice

"Traught, do you have a knife? Something sharp? A stick? Anything?" she looked again at the-

blood

-at Traught, who lay still, paralysed in horror beyond recognition, and held a pocket knife. Blanche reached down to take it, knowing that a mintaurian monstrosity threatened from but scan arm-lengths behind her. "Thanks."

She turned to confront the-

blood and blessings

-to confront the-

blood, and you shall be saved

-to confront-

blood you

-to-

she turned of a sudden

and

cut

its

strings.

The Second Marionette fell to the ground with a clanging echoing to a relief in its own silence.

"Traught? I think we'll be OK."

Evile Blanche saw the Third Marionette, a four-legged, four-armed two-headed beast, a chaotic swirl of white and black, hard and soft, turbulent and fluid, time and space, creative and controlling.

She heard the clickickity clicking of its mechanical heart. It beat with a rhythm. One that sounded regular.

not quite.

something not quite right.

It was a small white circle that seemed to whorl in the eye of the black storm in the entropic body before her.

It was its heart.

And with each beat, the white circle got a little bit bigger, and a little less circular.

tending to the turbulent.

The Third Marionette stood over Traught's unmoving form.

and the heart beat, that wearied, rusty clickity-click.

it was accelerating.

--to be continued--

Episode 14aa - Speaking of the Devil in the Flesh

2006-01-17T00:48:00.000-08:00

In which Evil Evile Blanche brings Traught to the summit of the dais of the Flabby Devil.

from: Not Jack 3.14159 - the Dismount.
by Mat the Hooplah, suddenly silent scriptoleer for the Saint Seer of Tallow, the shallow skimmer of aetherial wading pools and their acrid warmth.

--continues--

"WELL? OUT WITH IT?" the voice continued, rumbling through the foundations of the underworld.

"Gershwin Flabberglass," replied Evile Blanche, no fool to underhanded trickery.

"DON'T CARE. YOU HAVE NO APPOINTMENT. YOU HAVE NO CAUSE TO DISTURB. LOOK AT YOU'RE GARB! YOU'RE UNPROFESSIONAL. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE," the voice continued, Blanche's ears grew more sensitive to it.

Traught kept his hands up to his elbows over his ears. Apparently he didn't care for loud noises.

"What? I'm wearing a tie," Blanche said, defending herself. A big white and black bow tie, however, there was no denying it.

"UNACCEPTABLE." boomed the voice, "YOU DON'T HAVE AN APPOINTMENT. BE GONE BEFORE I SET A PACK OF DAEMONS UPON YOU. IN FACT, I WILL ANYWAY."

Here Blanche felt the need to intervene.

"Well, you did notice these ID passes affixed here. And the third daemon downstairs there said that the appointment was set. we're not only going to sign on board with the Big Man, but we're going to open the gates for thousands and thousand more literate souls," she said with strained feigned exhuberance.

"NOW THERE"S A THING. THAT DAEMON-"

"That Daemon cowered before the mere mention of your displeasure."

"AS IT SHOULD!"

"It wouldn't evoke your displeasure. Not willfully," continued Blanche, observing the shift in the Fourth Daemon's disposition. Something stirred within the black viscous sludge deep within its pitch pumping organ.

"IT WOULDN"T. IT IS WEAK. IT FAILS. IT MUST BE TAUGHT. IT MUST BE CURSED. FOR MY DISPLEASURE," screeched the Fourth Daemon, as it abandoned its post, and flew down the Devil' s Dais to the tier of the Third Daemon.

There remained two huge doors between Evile Blanche, and Traught, who had become paler than his escort during the last episode.

"I don't like it here," he shaked out between chattering teeth.

"No, no one does. Not much more. Not only will this build character, you'll continue to build it for decades afterwards."

"That's not reassuring," he replied.

"No, it's not. Where did you learn such a big word?" she asked.

"I can read, y'know," he snotted at her.

"I'm sure. Look, one more, just past the Devil beyond the Doors, and then we're out of here and back onto the fair grounds."

"You lying?" he asked, suspicious, growing sly.

"No. Not now. One more. Promise."

"K. How do we get in?"

Blanche checked under the Fourth Daemon's oversized desk. "There's a buzzer here, it will unlatch the gate. You may want to cover your face with a cloth or something. I'm serious. You buzz me in, and I'll open the door. You join me and we're in. K?" she winked at him.

"K," he twitched and eyebrow in a vague and awkward gesture.

They took up their positions, Traught at the desk, his finger hovering in withstrained anticipation, Blanche at the double doors, ready to pull them open by their large brass rings.

"Alright Traught. Rea-"

A sudden stench from the tier below. A smoke as of a tire fire poured upwards in gouts. Traught sought cover beneath the desk. Lightning branched across the surface of the tower, withdrawing suddenly back into the encroaching storm-cloud.

Evile Blanche's pet Leum, a dark, unctuous, sinewy dragon, appeared from within, a satisfied smirk upon his face, to match the blood there. It had grown in its power, and even now crackled yet larger with the fresh ozone of electricity and impermeable black fog.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Her pet Leum replied, "I was compelled to attend this moment."

"What? Why?" now Blanche grew suspicious.

"It's a compulsion. I don't have an answer, however, I know there's one beyond that door."

"What happened back there?"

"Traught," said Blanche's pet Leum," be a dear and buzz the door."

He did.

and Evile Blanche opened the double doors a crack. Traught ran up to join her, her pet Leum on her other side.

She swung the doors open, and there

for all three to see,

the Flabby Devil himself.

the Big Man.

the Beast.

A Devil of such massive girth so as to rival great lakes, if they were as insulating as fat, keeping the Devil so far within the waves of lipidinous incarceration that he couldn't feel anything, anymore. He could barely move.

But the Flabby Devil has eyes. Piercing eyes. It's eyes blue, it's skin, if such it could be called, the flat white of a belly-up bottom feeder, the hair upon its pate thick, coarse, and stubbly.

The eyes drew in everything, drew in all the light, like a black hole. They missed nothing, and turned every subtle variable shift in illumination into vast stores of information, with which it inacted its dread purpose.

through the Twelve Marionette Monstrosities that dangled from the Flabby Devil's prodigious, prolific digits.

"Well?" asked Blanche of her pet Leum, "do you have your answer?"

"Not yet," it replied," my answer lies in a Marionette."

Evile Blanche's pet Leum approached the first Marionette, a clockwork machine, cogs missing, misfiring, spindles slipping, rods seizing, yet, on the it churned, in fits and backfiring stops.

The Flabby Devil twitched one of its long, tendrilous fingers, and the First Marionette approached her pet Leum.

Steam erupted, coughing out words, sussurations in a language none had ever heard beyond the doors. But what matter that? It still had its charms and sway over the behaviour of even so powerful a beast as a Dragon.

Evile Blanche's pet Leum fell inert to the ground, its slumped figure like a discarded river, devoid of motion.

--to be continued--

Episode 14a - Distort and DisTraught

2006-01-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

In which the Flab trickles downhill as Evile Blanche the Evil Evil Clown and Traught continue ascent to the throne of the Flabby Devil.

from: Not Jack 3.1415 - the Discharge!
by Mat the Hooplah, desperate dye-in-the-wonder of Saint Seer of Tallow, of whom, posthumously, naught was found but his auditory channelings.

--continues--

The Second Daemon refused Evile Blanche and Traught passage, as the ID pass given them by the First Daemon was not properly affixed.

"What do I do? Put it on?" asked Traught.

"There's no other way. There are about seventeen more of these things around the corner, cruel and bored. We have to, I guess. Me first." and Evile Blanche put on her ID tag.

Traught followed suit.

"There," she said, showing it to the Second Daemon.

"Fine. Sign in," it said.

"What?" Blanche felt the noose tightening.

"Sign in. You gotta sign. Here," the Second Daemon held out a beautiful specimen of stationery, a marble-finished pen, like water-rippled emerald across its polished surface.

Blanche caught herself leaning over to the visitor's registry. She stood up suddenly, feeling again the perfect weight of the pen. The ink must flow so smoothly, without blotting.

She leaned over again. Traught kicked her in the shin.

"Ow. What's wrong with you?" she whined.

"You told me not to sign anything, and you keep trying to sign. So I kicked you for lying to me."

She dropped the pen. "Egads, what am I doing?"

"Yeah. What, indeed," said Traught haughtily.

"You," she said sternly to the Second Daemon, "we already signed in down below. Remember? She issued these passes. You forgot already. She called ahead."

"She did?" it asked, its confidence and bluster momentarily thrown off.

"That's why you've decided to let us past. Remember?" she asked, throwing a wink at Traught.

"That's right. Thank you," scratching its head, the Second Daemon stepped aside and let them past.

"How'd you do that?" asked Traught, bewildered and bewondered.

"These ones have terrible memories, and don't care about the rules so much. If you give them an excuse to torture you, they will. If you play by the rules, about which they know nothing, you can do just about anything."

"Huhn?"

"Never mind. I think the next one could be a lot trickier. Never met one, only heard about them," said Blanched as they approached the third tier.

"Hi there! I'm the Third Daemon on your climb up the echelon to the Big Man himself. It's great to meet you."

An extended hand, a huge grin, likely cursed onto its face for all eternity. Traught trembled at the site of its prominent teeth.

"I just want to welcome you here, and let you know that we care deeply. Now, what is it I can do for you here today?" A patient pause, the Third Daemon suddenly all ears.

"Be careful. It interprets your words in twisted and corrupt ways. Don't speak here," Evile Blanche whispered.

Traught nodded.

"We have an appointment with the Fourth Daemon, you see," said Blanche.

"Yes, well, ha ha, the thing is about that, is that I book all of the Fourth Daemon's appointments personally, and I haven't got you in my book. However, that's not even a little problem. I think we can squeeze you in, there was a cancellation.

"If you wouldn't mind just signing the ol' ink and swirls right here in this appointment book, you can scoot right along," the Third Daemon held out an even more magnificent pen.

"You know the Fourth Daemon well, don't you?" asked Blanche coyly.

"Of course. We've been damned together since I don't remember when," it replied.

"You know how it hates to be angered."

"Do I. Boy, you have no idea," the Third Daemon said.

"Then you know what it will do when it finds out you've forgotten the appointment with us. You forgot to write it down. Remember?" Blanche waited.

The Third Daemon cocked an eyebrow, suddenly unsure.

"See, we have these ID passes, which means we've already signed in anyway. Now if there's a cancellation, what's the harm in us just continuing up the echelon?"

The Third Daemon scrutinized them with a look of raw skeptcism. "You don't look like slayers. or saints for that matter. What are you exactly?"

"I'm a Clown, of sorts, by way of Evil, which should displease you to no end. Not sure about the lad. Best be on our way. Thanks a mill," Evile Blanche walked past the Third Daemon, and they continued climbing.

"That was easy," said Traught.

"Of course, you just had to stand there and do nothing. Well done, by the way. You'd be amazed how many times this sort of thing goes awry because of unthinking lunkheads," Blanche considered her own words for a moment.

"Is the next one going to be so easy?"

"I hope so, yet have absolutely no basis for it. Did you see how scared the daemon got when we mentioned the Fourth's anger?"

"Oh, right. That's right," Traught said, his eyes growing wider.

"WHO DARE DISTURB ME IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THIS WORK!!!!' boomed the voice from the fourth tier.

Blanche turned whiter, a beacon of terror illuminating one of the worse neighbourhoods in the underworld.

--to be continued--

Episode 13 a - Disconcert with the Flabby Devil

2006-01-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

In which the Hearts of Darkness beat again, much to Traught's disenchanted chagrin.

from: Not Jack 3.141 - The Flabby Devil's Sociopathological lying around and about.
by Mat the Hooplah, a man, new and sis to Saint Seer of Tallow, secreter of spirits of the fundament.

--as this has become too terrifying, even for so bold a narrator as yours truly, commentary shall be replaced with quotations. may the wheel turn in your favour--

"I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils that swayed and drove men - men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be..."
-- Marlowe, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Elbowing its way through the palpable darkness, an oleaginous, jaundiced light smeared itself over the surfaces in the room giving everything a similar distortion, and sickly pallor.

The Flabby Devil sat (one could only assume) upon his throne on high, before the great dais stood Traught, Evile Blanche the Evil Evil Clown, and her pet Leum, and black and slippery dragon. They remained transfixed by the profanity that dripped down the stairs to the throne in a vicious, viscous slick.

"Bwaahahahahaaaaa," laughed the Flabby Devil, sending waves across his body from the depths of his layers of jowls. The sound made Traught and Blanche cringe, and her pet Leum was uncharacteristically unsettled.

The Flabby Devil teetered atop the pyramidal dais. What seemed an infinite number of uneven steps, flanked by daemons and gargoyles along the perimeter, dancers and musicians played power tools and unmuffled engines in paroxysms of disorientation.

Evile Blanche schemed the situation out. It would best do to take the child, and skip past this particular nasty. He had grown considerably since she had last seen him, which hadn't been so long at all. His corpulence swoll like a restless ocean beneath his thick skin, waves running across his face and body with every motion, every word.

Traught was transfixed on the Flabby Devil in the distance above, Blanche reached to touch his shoulder, when he bolted. Traught raced directly at the crooked, broken, crumbling stairs that twisted and swtched-back all the way to the apex, the Heart of stagnant blackness.

Traught took the first step as Blanche reached him. As her pet Leum could fly, he didn't concern himself, and remained aloft, aloof.

The first daemon stepped before Traught, barring his passage. This was his alter-ego, a hollow reflection of himself. "I'm sorry, you cannot pass at this time." Traught looked for a way around, but the uneven stairs distorted his perspective, giving him vertigo beyond a casual glance.

"When can I?" he asked.

"No," said Blanche, "you're playing their game."

"What?" said Traught, as if he'd only just noticed that she'd arrived.

"Don't play their game. They'll insinuate, and lead on, and trick, and lie, and cajole, and goad, but nothing is above board."

Traught retained his confused look.

"Look, there is no way to win. It would be a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent who may just bludgeon you with their forehead. Get it?" Blanche doubted Traught did, despite his emphatic nodding, which took some time to abate.

"No," Traught was liking this less and less, if that was even possible at this point.

"Do you have an appointment," the daemon asked.

"Don't answer that!!!" Blanche interjected with thrice potence. "Look, kid, I don't know what you know, but if you've never dealt with this before, I'd understand. This isn't just any schoolyard bully."

"no?" he asked meekly, yet hopefully.

"No, this here's the granddaddy. this here's the fat man who sits on all of the fat men all the way down to the Principal, of all bullies," Blanche whispered conspirationally.

"So, this here," she paused for consideration,"doesn't care about you, or anything to do with you. All daemons want is what they don't have. The minute they get something they want, they want something else, which they don't have. It's a particular torment to which the Flabby Devil is the precurser."

"What do we do?" Traught was becoming more cogent with every passing moment.

"First thing, we're not going to play along, which means signing something and selling your soul. Never sign your name to anything. Understand?"

He nodded.

"Good. Second thing, be careful for their weapons. They pull red tape out of the air and bind you with it until you're immobile."

"k"

"If you can capture their buck, they will let you past. However, they are shifty about sending the poor thing elsewhere the moment you think you have them cornered."

"Check"

"Third, don't listen. They will speak in an increasing amount of detail. As it becomes more intricate, it becomes more distant, and the next thing you know, you've signed something. Never sign anything!"

"I remember. Was I supposed to listen to you?"

"Quiet! Fourth, we're going to have to..."

"If you don't have an appointment, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," said the daemon, who had been gradually steaming into a petulant snit of deep-affrontery.

"This is our moment, Traught. You ready?" Evile Blanche braced herself as if in runner's blocks.

"Sure!" he imitated her, preparing to race past the daemon.

"Traught? You have an appointment. Please go ahead," the daemon produced two ID passes.

"You sign anything?" Blanche accused.

"No. Did you?"

"No."

They took the ID passes in hand. "Don't put it on," she advised, and they stepped through the passage upwards to a second tier.

where awaited a second daemon.

Evile Blanche held up her ID pass, and the Second Daemon, a thickset bulldog of a being, short-necked, snub-nosed, red-faced and sanguine in disposition, behind distant porcine eyes, looking up past the sty.

"You have to put the ID passes on to pass," snuffled the Second Daemon.

Traught and Blanche looked at each other, uncertain.

--to be continued--

Episode 12a - Traught Trots

2006-01-05T20:02:00.000-08:00

In which the lost waif wanders every which way but out of the darkest city of Dis, a massive absence hanging in its dust-scoured streets, Evile Blanche the Evil Evil Clown and her oleaginous dragon pet Leum.

from: Not Jack 3.14 - Evil Evile Blanche's gawds.
by Mat the Hooplah, nine-fingered paper dye-scratcher for Saint Seer of Tallow's endless ramblings under what can undoubtedly be nothing other than serious food poisoning.

--bless those of you who have returned to observe what can only be our darkest turn in this otherwise meandering tale. The muse who oversees this evocation has a twisted sense of the absurd. Observe.--

Every street lay in deepest shadow, darker than any that had fallen over Traught. Darker than under the covers. Darker than the best spot in hide-and-seek. Darker than the middle of the night on the New Moon. Darker than a cave with the flashlight off. Darker yet than any immolation rained down from a displeasing Sun magnified through ingenious glass, and down on an anthill.

these streets swallowed him. Not all of him, but some small measure. His arms and legs felt like rubbery flesh, not vital, but moving. He could move his eyes, but saw nothing. He only knew about the wall beside him because he couldn't move past it. His hands, and entire body, were numb. He fumbled along, deeper into the darkness, weaving his path towards what awaited him in its blackest heart.

-

Evile Blanche followed in her pet Leum's viscous wake.

"Well?" She asked, her voice absorbed by the impenetrable black.

"Well what?"

"Do you have a scent? Oops, sorry."

"Careful where you step. You won't live to do that again," replied her pet Leum in a soft hiss. Menacing.

"Ow. Now we're even. Keep a civil forked tongue. Do you have the scent?" She asked, distracting the dragon from pursuing any other thread of conversation.

"Yesss. Not far now. But we must hurry."

"Why?" Blanche asked nervously.

"He's slowing down his pace. And he's heading directly for the hold of the Flabby Devil."

"Why hurry? This should be fun." Blanche rubbed her palms together in anticipation.

"You're underestimating the Flabby Devil, and overestimating this child. Let me eat him and be done with it."

"No. No eating. Maybe some nibbling if you're good. Or rather, not. Or Evil Evil, at the very least." Blanche crossed the street, found the opposite wall, and continued at a hurried pace.

Her pet Leum hisssed under his tongue.

-

In the mid-distance, a light. As Traught approached it, being the only point of reference he'd seen in what had seemed an eternity, it's glow took on a distorted halo, as if a lantern's glass was smeared with translucent jelly. His attention turned to his nose, as it, too, was suddenly filled with the first hints of sensation. He tasted it on his throat, but couldn't quite recall what it was.

The light drew nearer.

A sound swelled into his perception. His mind slipped into his ears.

A rhythm?

No.

Irregular. A broken heartbeat. A cacophonous symphony. Harpsichords and discord.

Traught felt the fear welling, a chill through his nether regions, threatening to freeze him in place, in paroxysms of paralyzed fright.

His mind sought refuge, but his eyes saw only the approaching light, distorted, bent, rent. His nose smelled the acrid aromas. His tongue tasted bitter jaundice. His skin felt the caustic burn. His ears kept drawing back his attention, compelling him to listen to it. Unnatural. His nervous energy stilled.

He had arrived at the source of the profane light.

Profane.

-

Evile Blache addressed her pet Leum with a tone of fondness that may have contained the roots of barbs. He kept up his guard as the pair approached a foul-smelling illumination in the distance.

"Honestly," asked the dragon, baiting, "what's the worst that can happen?"

"I can't honestly say, which has me concerned. I've encountered all kinds of Evil, most of which are either cruelties or betrayals, often both. I can't imagine how much further the Flabby Devil will go. It has never ceased to astonish me." Blanche paled beyond her usual pallor, the white of her face glowing in opposition to the approaching light.

The cracked timepiece sounded in their ears.

"I loathed this," her pet Leum's tongue writhed out, his words a flaming gasoline spill burning an opaque river.

The two approached. Evile Blanche could feel the massive puissance thickening the air before them, putting up resistance to their progress. "What's this? Pet Leum?"

"Never encountered such a thing. The air thickens. The Flabby Devil is more massive than ever," the dragon hisssed, an edge of hesitation introduced for the first time to its disdainful larynx.

They found the source of the sound, and the light.

Profane.

--well, what better place than this to leave you to my devices, my dearest blog-servers. May you gaze into this Abyss with as much mercy in your soul as this Abyss has when it gazes into you. Be not afraid to return, to meet the monstrous aberration of the Subnatural postpomo technomythology.

Where else would you expect to find an Evil Evil Clown?

You'll meet the Flabby Devil. May you never do so twice.

-to be continued.

Episode 11a- Traught Discends

2006-01-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

In which the Chirrugueresque circus tent holds tales of horror and woe in its heart of darkness.

from; Not Jack; Book 3.1 - Sepia, see Dora
by Mat the Hooplah, squid-squeezing slanderer of Saint Seer of Tallow, burner at all ends.

as we remember, before our leap over the chasm into a newest year, Traught, high-strung, over-sugared young Circus-enthusiast shuddered with excitement as the Crowd around him teemed with anticipation. He had never been left unattended in some capacity, and the building excitement surged like fudge through his veins - coagulated lightning.

Traught's Uncle wandered the Midway, searching for a means to end his search for his nephew.
Patch abducted, Ms Pell searching for him, ensnared in the intrigue.

And a restlessness building into a riot, all having to do with cheese on a stick.

if the Summer has its dog days, these are the cat nights. Dogs howl and cats yowl, add the screech of an owl to deliver us, once again, into the thick of it.

read on, behold, be ware, and be warned. This is not for the feint of heart, or sissies of any type, whether affected or afflicted--

"I recall everything, as if it was but to happen," said the Ellephant, drifting off suddenly. The Mouse, subconsciously sliding against slipping off of the spacing storyteller's skull. slowly. The Mouse Nightmared.

With the black miasma of the Nightmare, a spirit of a stallion come to churn up the deepest darkness of dreams in the ossiferous caverns of the soul. It billowed out, like an oily fog, to enshroud the entire crowd whole, into its Abysmal hug, its tendrils of desperate fear. A need teetering over the edge of the unspeakable.

but this darkness was much deeper. much worse. The cold indifference of the shallow stare from the pitch eye of a slain cuttlefish.

Traught's jittery jiggles suddenly stopped. the tendrils slithered up his legs. he kicked at them in vain. This fog wouldn't blow over. He held his breath and ran, tripping immediately over the person who had been seated next to him. He lost his balance, falling into the aisle, and down the hard, wooden stairs into the bleachers.

One.

Ouch.

Two.

Ow.

Three.

Wince.

Four.

Bruise.

Five.

Sore.

Six.

Ache.

Seven.

Hurt.

Eight.

Pain.

Nine

Enough.

Traught came to a stop, hanging over the edge of the Ring itself, his nether cheeks Mooning the invisible crowd that uttered not a word. Then again, Traught thought, maybe I'm just not hearing them.

then, a spark. Correction, a sparkler. No, it became a flame. A fire. roaring, crackling, cackling. It burned in a perfect Circle. The Circle of flame spoke without moving its lips.
Traught, I know what you fear.

Traught became terribly terrified. He didn't even know what his own fears were, and trembled fearfully at the possibility that the flaming circle did.

A Clown, malicious in its makeup, a swirl of black on white. Unless it was white on black. Or something similar. Or even if it wasn't, the effect was meant to astound, and it rather did.
Traught was astounded.

"I'm not afraid of Clowns. Not even Evil Clowns!" he said defiantly, puffing his bellows into preparation for a petulant output.

"Not to worry, dear boy. I know what you are afraid of. Besides this isn't a Clown, nor even an Evil Clown. This here nasty is an Evil Evil Clown. I've told her what your fears are."

Traught managed to gulp despite his growing tension and expectation. What could be so frightening?

"Hello, Traught, is it? I'm going to put on a show just for you. You're going to love it. Adore it even, I'd say. Now, by the look of you, you're a bit of a devil in a sugar-pile, but this is going to appeal even to the strobe of you attention. You can call me Evile Blanche the Clown, and I'm going to show you the truth."

Traught’s neck turned to rubber, and he passed out, the black swallowing him behind his own eyelids. Not even in sleep could he escape the ineffable terror that welled up from within him to meet it in cataclysmic contact. The inky swirls enveloped him, splashing against his cheeks.

Traught found himself at the edge of a dark, foul-smelling river. He pulled away as his gag reflex sought to purge any trace of it from his stomach. He heaved, wretching violently while he retreated.

"Oh, now, don't be shy. Introduce yourself. Do you have any idea where you are?" asked the voice of Evile Blanche the Evil Evil Clown out of her obfuscation.

"N-n-n-n-no," was the meek, timorous, mousy reply, uttered only when in truly shocked terror.
"This is the City of Dis. You may have heard of it, you may not. Either way, this is going to make a Dickensian sweatshop look like the smiling end of Paradise. It isn't the only City in Hell, but it does have one distinction. It's the capital of this particular frozen part of the lands of suffering without redemption. And even the Hierarchs of this Abyss of merciless cruelty shun it."

Traught could no longer move.

"Well, I won't be carrying you along, dear fellow. I'm only here as guide and torturous insight. I won't carry you on my head, you might crush my hat. I'll summon something for you." Evile Blanched clapped her white gloves together. Out of the river, a black serpentine dragon, long whiskers dripping acrid splotches across the landscape.

"Hope you enjoy the ride."

Traught's terror came around. He broke and ran.

"Ah, so, you're ready for the tour after all. You, my pet Leum," said Evile Blanche to the dragon, "you may come along, to witness. I can't recall the last time anyone's come here from the lands of the living."

Leum replied, his voice spilling as thick a slick as the air, pungent with acrid smoke, could buoy, "I have slept long, and have forgotten much. What do I witness?"

Evile Blanche rolled her eyes, "the snaring of a mortal soul."

"Has this happened before?" asked her pet Leum.

"Stories without anchor, drifting from one thought to another," she replied dreamily.

"Long then."

"Not so long as your sleep, restless pet," she purred as the two went in pursuit of Traught, an urchin the in capital of the Underworld.

--now I shall interrupt, to truly spin this away from its inevitable horror for just a moment longer. Traught has already found himself in dire circumstances outside the suspect attention of Evile Blanche and her Pet Leum, whatever manner of beast he turn out to be.

this bodes not well. Despite Traught's high tension, high vibration, high oscillation, he was entirely fragile, and perhaps the stress of so many extreme visions in such a short spanse might traipse him over a precipice, and into a frame of mind not altogether suitable for children.

one can only hope.

--to be continued--

Episode 10a - Traught's discent

2005-12-20T14:14:00.000-08:00

In which Traught's taken to a most displeasant place.

from: Not Jack Book 2: Virgil Ante.
by Mat the Hooplah, disconcerted displayer of Saint Seer of Tallow's discordant distant dissertation.

--well, well, well, the tale parades back in and around on itself. What is to become of our fair assembly of characters? What ever happened to that nice young lad from the Mall? And his boss? Does she know? What of the Uncle, barred from the Big Top? What of Traught, in the Big Top itself?

"Ladies and gentlemen and... others, welcome to the Three-Ring Big Top, the Greatest Show in the Whole Wide Worlds! You will astounded and amazed by all the magic and buffoonery in store, and oh, so much more," Not Jack called in a loud, deep voice. Traught felt it shake his skeleton from the inside out.

Not Jack stood in the spotlight.

Traught ran an index finger around the dark contour of his other hand, a splayed eclipse of the RingMaster.

"Brace yourselves, for the how is begun..."

The light snuffed, the audience enshrouded in dark.

Traught felt nervous. Anxious. He shook, giving into it until he shuddered throughout. He panted, hyperventilating. He couldn't hear the sound of his own breath.

Meanwhile, across the Parking Lot, Ms Pell had narrowly avoided being drawn into a fracas that was breaking out over the lack of parking. One customer had punched a store clerk and free-form pugilism had resulted. She wondered what had happened to Pell.

She strode a direct path through the unattended Gate into the labyrinth of the halls of stalls. She assessed the chaos, and plunged into the teeming mass of humanity, plotting as direct a course for the Big-Top as she could.

Ms Pell wished to intercept one person who could give her directions. Why is that so complicated? She had heard all manner of vitriolic glossolalia in response. She avoided what appeared to be a Cheese-Dunk booth.

She spied the prismatic stalls bordering a concourse directly towards the Big Top. Aha, now we're getting somewhere. She took the concourse, to her left, directly towards the Tent, there to find someone in authority.

She looked over her left shoulder at a stall decorated with bold brands and logos, one of which appeared distinct, labelling the stall itself. She was unfamiliar with any of the corporate affiliations.

She returned her attention to the Tent. Vanished?! She glanced to the stall, then around behind her. There rose the Big-Top. That was in the other direction! She glanced towards the stall. The brands had moved, and the stall had grown shorter and squatter. The identifying logo had also changed.

Ms Pell continued her journey towards the Big-Top.

She heard screams pour out of it, which didn't abate. She squirmed, holding her hands over her ears.

The lights went out. Traught heard the Daredevil skid off the ramp, yelling for the duration to the loud crash, and the quieter burn. Then, "oh boy."

The lights came back on. He found himself amidst the capacity audience, gawking at the Centre Ring, where an Ellephant leafed trhough a huge tome with the her proboscis. The Mouse slept atop her cranium. Dozing.

Dreaming.

"Once upon a time," began the Ellephant.

-to be continued

Episode 14 - Dreams of a Mouse Part 4

2005-12-12T19:57:00.000-08:00

In which the First Mark revisits the First of the First Marks.

from: Not Jack Book 2: Would you care for Somnabulism?.
by Mat the Hooplah, crazed chronolographer for the crassly crooked Saint Seer of Tallow, slick spirit-sucking salesman.

[-PentWhistle erstwhile interrupts this otherwise fluid (?) narrative to insert, via carat, so to speak, or to write, with this phrase poised above it: Mat the Hooplah had run off with his newly arrived vat of mustard, and had vanished for the past three weeks. Saint Seer was off in pursuit, having been in the middle of a long diatribe about the Byzantine Empire's folly.

[and then returned, paler by far, and silent until Mat finally returned, something deep within him satiated. Saint Seer turned paler.

[then, in the end, they resumed. One doesn't want to stand between a man and his condiments

[now, on with the show.

[-PentWhistle]

--well, have you deigned return to our tale, having leapt the gap in time as effortlessly as if there was a net? It would appear so, and for that, you are rewarded with the conclusion. Quite the cliffhanger, surely has it raised your ire or disinterest? Either, neither, nor?

--The First Mark has waited patiently, lost within the singularity of the darkness within the Three-Ring Big Top. She has rested on the edge of her seat. Traught lost. His Uncle still wandering he concourse, riding the razor-edge of dispair. He hasn't been idle, but the Carnies will get to him, and so shall we--

The First Mark sat back, massaging feeling back into her buttocks, feeling the deep line left in her thighs where she'd sat at the edge of her seat. The Ellephant looked into the distance, the Mouse stirring, circling a tuft of hair three times, then settled back to Dream the following:

Scrow awoke, surrounded by his personal halo of nine bleached angels, all staring at him with PunchPunch the Evil Evil Clown's twisted features.

Jess awoke, circled by her multi-medial monument of nine sculpted devils, all regarding her with Bozobub the Evil Clown's villain0us expression.

Scrow and Jess had awoken at 3:15 AM, without any memory of having fallen asleep.

The Ellephant snickered to herself at the thought of it.

Scrow and Jess rolled into each other's arms. Imagine a brief pause, before they awoke, startled to find themselves naked in an unfamiliar room. Both jumped up, yelling, fighting for the single sheet.

It finally ripped, each falling back with jaggedly half of the sheet.

Both struck their head. Both remember nothing in the interregnum.

Both reawoke, as PunchPunch, and Bozobub, in the Physical World. Our World. They are here, and wear many guises. They are no longer merely fictitious entities. They live and breathe.

The Mouse stirred awake, the Ellephant slowly rising below. Not Jack appeared in the centre ring.

"Now, wasn't that an amazing thing?"

"What are you talking about? What the hell was that?" the First Mark was confused, tired, hungry, and leaning heavily on outrage as a crutch. "Get me out of here."

"Well, you wouldn't be much of a First Mark if I were to let you off the hook that easily."

"What?! Let me out."

"We're doing our best, but you'll have to work with us. Now, here's something that'll really flip your lid."

Suddenly, Not Jack loomed above her. He reached a huge white glove towards her, and she passed out, and had dreams of her own.

The Mouse watched.

--Now this isn't the end of this, as I'm sure you have surmised. Yet, what has become of our dear friends Traught and his Uncle? The Capital of Hell and The Halls of Smoky Mirrors. These three-rings are unlike any other. Dare you read on? The line has yet to be drawn--

--to be continued

Episode 13 - Dreams of a Mouse Part 3

2005-11-13T19:27:00.000-08:00

In which the gormless get a clue

from: Not Jack Book 2: A fatal R.S.V.P. pour vous
by Mat the Hooplah, boisterous blunderbuss of Saint Seer of Tallow's stuffed-n-such.

--well fellow blogskateers, this twisted tail of slight-of-hand and shiftiness was not one of the carnies, as is often the case. No, the Clowns have perpetrated dark deeds beyond the boundaries of the media in which they have found themselves. Confounding as it is astounding. Read on, in amazement--

The Ellephant's trunk curled up and unrolled as she breathed, the Mouse scratched behind an ear, and resumed dreaming. The First Mark watched, compelled, for somewhere at the end of this strange adventure
alien
there would be a punchline. It would come to an end and she could resume her life.

The Mouse's Dream had this flavour:

Jess admired the fourth object she'd only just completed. A statue in her series on the Evil Clown. It had yet to have a name or a title, but she knew that soon enough, there would be both.

She was eager to begin another, and was certain of the image, yet uncertain of the medium. She'd already done the cardboard and saliva, dried fruit and plastic building blocks, industrial glue and real-hair wigs, and the most recent in condiments and stainless steel.

Jess closed her eyes...

Bozobub appeared to her, grinning wickedly. Jess started, but could not wake herself up.

"It's a trick I learned from those delightful Freddy Kruger movies. Quite handy, as you can tell by your fear," he said to her. "I'm not going to do you harm, Jessssssica. There's a certain someone I would love for you to meet."

"Who, someone?" was what drifted from between her lips and down her throat.

"An artist. I'm sure you'd get along smashingly. You will know him by the name Scrow. Time's up for me, darling. Must go. Sweeter dreams." Bozobub faded away, leaving a trailing scent of a burning pile of wet, rotting leaves.

Jess woke of a sudden, her nose atwitch with the stench. It lingered beyond the duration of her dream. Jess retained the fear with which she had awoken. Stricken with insomnia, restless, she went to her studio, and began work on her fifth piece.

Scrow dozed into deep sleep in the midsts of his nine canvasses of the emergent PunchPunch. He passed out on dark zephyrs of imagination. More's the pity.

PunchPunch descended on him the moment he awoke in his dream. "Got you, my little squirrel!" she cried out exuberantly. "You paint like a dream, doll, but don't fret, fret not. Know why?"

"Why, no."

"Let me tell you, that's what then," called PunchPunch, "this isn't the dream you thought you was having, just so we're both in the same cell. This is something that can only be attributed to your atrocious diet. And your skin doesn't fit quite right."

"quite right."

"I know just the woman for you. You might want to take down the paintings first, though. On second thought, maybe not. Ah, Hell who cares. Never mind."

Scrow shook his head, no.

"You, you are following this aren't you? Getting through?"

"Getting through."

"I still have doubts. Ah well. Look, I think the girl for you is named Jess, and she's a sculpturess. Find her. After you awaken. All right, I have to fly. Good night, and good bye."

Scrow awoke, dazed, soaked in sweat.

"What the hell was that??? I need a belt." he went in search of scotch.

The First Mark gasped at what she saw as the impending conflict between two pained souls coerced by two tortured souls. She wondered how much more she could take.

"One last," cried Not Jack, from somewhere behind the curtain's slack.

Which one will it be? let's read on and see, shall we?

--to be continued--

Episode 12 - Dreams of a Mouse Part 2

2005-11-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

In which the Evil Clown Bozobub and the Evil Evil Clown PunchPunch make the attempt to render themselves made manifest, such that the latter can beat the former senseless, as the saying goes.

from Not Jack; Book 2 - the First I Ever Heard of It
by Mat the Hooplah, subjective objectifier of Saint Seer of Tallow, well-known, well-done Medium.

--the sordid tale continues with the dream, the Mouse beneath the deepest waves of the Ocean, eyes dancing swimmingly in the currents. The Mouse had eaten a particularly vivacious seed but moments earlier, something in the nascent phases of sprouting. A budding awareness, ingested unbeknownst to the ingestor--

The Mouse rolled over, shifting position atop the Ellephant's generous pate, which never shifted through the whole process. The First Mark blinked, realising she hadn't for the duration of the first part of the dream. She felt vertigo of a sudden.

The Dream continued.

Bozobub and PunchPunch approached the physical plane from their tale of origin, approaching it ever through the imagination of the sentient. Particularly the sensitive sentient, who perceived with a greater amount of their intuition than most. These were the prey for the Clowns.

Bozobub found a Sculptor, chiseling a hunk of marble into a likeness that he felt resembled his image of himself. The Sculptor, strong of arm would be his for the coming conflict. Bozobub set about his incarnation.

PunchPunch discovered a precocious Painter, who had long been splashing oils on canvas, making them dance among the light, dark and shadow, revealing tortured faces of Clowns, writhing expressions of agony, pain, anger, violence.

She hesitated, but for a moment, then made about her incantation.

Both Clowns fell to whispering to their respective chosen inhabitants of the physical world.

[PentWhistle hopes that they do not read this tale presently -Ed]

Please allow for allow for a brief interlude, while our two angonised protagonists discover their means to their ends.

It has been noted, although by neither Mat the Hooplah, nor any other scrivener on the subject, that there is a definite hue to the colour of the relationship between the two.

Namely, that the Evil Clown is a Clown, whose evil deeds are perpetrated upon the good, whose violence doesn't delight or lead to the sublime, regardless of its artistic expression. That's not to say they won't pick a fight with those other than practitioners of good deeds.

An Evil Clown might ritualise their deeds to the painstakingly nit-picky details of serial murderer.

An Evil Evil Clown, on the other hand, is defined by the evil deeds of the Evil Clown, and so, is a response. The Evil Evil Clown wreaks evil down upon the evil. Both Bozobub and PunchPunch were cruel, malicious and without mercy in dealing with their respective targets.

And thus did they slowly emerge into fuller detail in the imaginations of both the Sculptor Jess and the Painter Scrow.

Jess' next sculpture, made entirely from chewed cardboard, resembled Bozobub in every detail. Jess found herself watching his face emerge, the minutiae of his contours allowing themselves to be found.

Jess did not put the sculpture up for sale or auction. She placed it at the foot of her bed.

Scrow painted a series of paintings on canvas in multimedia, some acrylic, some india ink, some marker and a few objects. The series of nine paintings featured PunchPunch.

His earliest paintings were cruder, her shape vague, as if she wandered in the fog. As the series continued to evolve, PunchPunch emerged. She wore a cruel, colourless expression, and carried a long smooth wooden bat.

PunchPunch only interacted with anyone else in but the last painting. She stood, bat slung casually over one shoulder, legs akimbo, over a crushed Punch puppet, crumpled around the hand within has it had broken and curled in pain.

The arm lead off the canvas to an unknown, unseen Puppeteer. Whether they were alive or dead was unclear.

Scrow hung them in a circle about his bed in his basement room.

the two Clowns laughed.

and the First Mark felt shivers run down her spine. She looked to escape her seat, but she discovered it floated, unbolted from its concrete moorings, in the surrounding sphere of impenetrable darkness. The only other thing was the Ring, the Ellephant and the dreams of the Mouse.

dear blog-scanners, what mad merry-making will be made manifest materially? More to come, you won't forget the next instalments, in which Evil and Evils grip Jess and Scrow, respectively.

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction Episode 11- an Elephant remembers in the Dreams of a Mouse Part 1

2005-11-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

In which the Circus' first act, before a crowd of the First Mark, and she alone, gets underway, and the origins of Evil Clowns is laid bare, the grease smeared away

from; Not Jack; Book 2 - that weird Ellephant-Mouse thing.
by Mat the Hooplah, questionable quill-boy to Saint Seer of Tallow, epicurean of all that is ingestible.

--Alas my poor blog-servers, the story to be unfolded here is a thing to remember, and recount to countess generations of audience, to prove their stoicism--

"I remember it as thought it was but a lifetime ago," began the Ellephant, who fell into silent reverie of a sudden. The Mouse, perched precipitously upon the pachyderm's pate, paused peacefully in sumptuous sleep. The Mouse dreamed.

And with the dream, its ghost rose out of the Mouse's cranium and into the darkness above, for the First Mark to see. She gasped in wonder, for before her the coalescing image, a prismatic nebula condensing into a dense chromatic swirl, which exploded in a firework starburst. The First Mark flinched. The stars hung all over the black space around her, into the sparkling distance.

A Red five-pointed star spun around a Green five-pointed star in a whirling dance. The First Mark wondered what the Mouse had eaten before bedtime.

She hadn't noticed the spinning disc where the colourful ball had been. Before it blew up. Its diameter stretched with it, until it took on the size of the Circus' centre Ring. From its centre emerged, as if out of the dirt and sawdust of the floor itself, a Clown in full makeup, rainbow wig and suspenders to match, ridiculous in the extreme. The First Mark chuckled despite herself.

The Clown reached into the swirling whirlpool at the centre of the ring, still not settled, and out emerged another Clown. The Two reached in and out emerged two more. Then four and on and on, until the entire Ring was filed with Clowns.

One Clown, who's makeup was Black and Red, whose smile consisted of bloody, jagged teeth, and who wore hobnailed big, ox's blood, floppy shoes with suspenders to match, reached into the swirling pool but moments before it closed for good. Out he pulled a Clown-sized cannon. This Clown grinned with malicious intent to match his makeup.

This was the First Evil Clown, who's name was Bozobub.

Bozobub took advantage of the Clown's propensity for allowing themselves to be fired out of Clown-sized cannons, and began firing the Clown's out of his. One by one, the gullible, clueless, and curious sailed off into the darkness. All of the Clowns would have met this end to satiate Bozobub's odd sensibilities.

Portofoil the Clown, always suspicious of ill-intent, refused the cannon. "No, Bozobub. I won't let you send me into the darkness until you tell me what you hope we'll find there."

"Ah," said Bozobub, honing this thoughts on the stone of his heart, "I was hoping you would tell me, dear Portofoil."

"How many Clowns have returned?" asked Portofoil, ever resistant to the beckoning of the barrel.

"Many of them are even now on their way here, you will see," hissed Bozobub, like a snake laughing at the dying throes of its prey in its coils.

"I see. Why, what's beyond the darkness. I heard a rumour about something called 'Bleachers.' Is there any truth to those?" Portofoil asked.

"Oh, don't believe in rumours, but believe me when I tell you there are bleachers. They will burn through your makeup, nose and clothes and turn you white. Don't worry, there's a net to keep us from falling into them," assured Bozobub, beckoning another Clown into the barrel.

"And, where is the net, Bozobub?" asked Portofoil, suddenly hopeful for a shot at the cannon.

Bozobub fired, and another Clown sailed off into the darkness. "I was hoping you would tell me, Portofoil."

"No, I'll wait, thank you." Portofoil wandered to the back of the line..

"Ah, here we are," said Bozobub in a voice to terrify children and charm adults, "the first has returned."

Bozobub was referring to the shape emerging from the darkness on foot. It spoke, "Bozobub, you shot us into the bleachers1 It hurt like hell you idiot." The Clown who emerged was bleached bone-white, head to toe.

This, then, was something new, an Evil Evil Clown, for this Clown had something of a mix of vitriol and venom and villainy in mind heart and soul, and Bozobub was the intended recipient.

This, then, was the clash, the fall, the schism, the end, the beginning, the lapse, the split, the wound, the rift, the feud.

Half of the Clowns sided with Bozobub, because he worked the Canon. These were Evil Clowns.

Half of the Clowns sided with the first of the Evil Evil Clowns, all of them completely white.

The ensuing contest rapt the First Mark with its brutality. She felt a wave of nausea, sympathy and horror wash through herself. She laughed, more and more loudly until she was close to delirium.

In the end, but two clowns remained, Bozobub and the first Evil Evil Clown, who named herself PunchPunch.

PunchPunch sneered, "I'm going to beat you senseless, just so you know."

Bozobub, turned the Cannon on her. "But just a moment PunchPunch. How can you beat me senseless?"

"Well, I was planning on starting with a left hook, then probably a right cross or uppercut," she said, approaching with cruel glee in her eye.

"That's not what I meant," Bozobub continued, keeping the Cannon between himself and PunchPunch. "You see, you can't beat me senseless. Nor could I do that to you. Can't you see where we are?" He gestured to the darkness around them and the ring illuminated around their feet.

"And where do you think we are?" she asked, slyly, approaching more stealthily.

"We're in the dreams of a Mouse," he said, his face falling when he realised she didn't start at the revelation.

"You're right, and you're wrong. We aren't in the dream of a Mouse," replied PunchPunch, "we are in an immaterial story, in which we exist only in the imaginary sphere, in which we appear in the dream of a Mouse. You're wrong because I can beat you senseless, but I have to manifest myself in the Physical plane to do so, and so will you," PunchPunch grew impatient.

"Then, what happened to all the other Clowns? Didn't we beat them senseless?" wondered Bozobub.

"No, don't you recall? We annihilated them. I just want to beat you senseless," said PunchPunch.

"Can I defend myself?" asked Bozobub.

"Of course," replied PunchPunch.

"Then fine, I'll meet you there."

They shook hands on it, shocking one another with the lack of joy buzzer.

And with that, they walked into the darkness, the spotlight slow to follow, and approached a shallow pool of water, a ladder rising into the darkness above. Bozobub climbed first, followed by PunchPunch, up up up up up until they reached a tiny platform. Both dove simultaneously, falling falling falling

and splashing into the pool, vanishing.

The First Mark found herself holding her breath. She gasped to let out her building panic. She began to wonder, if the PunchPunch and Bozobub knew that they were in the story that the Ellephant remembers in the Dream of a Mouse, in what strange place she existed.

Beyond the blog.

--to be continued--

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 10

2005-11-10T14:52:00.000-08:00

In which the Biggest Show in the Whole Wide Worlds is spun out by the RingMaster, Not Jack, to the Marks sitting enthralled in terror.

from: Not Jack; Book 1 - Into the Limedark
by Mat the Hooplah, th'inker for Saint Seer of Tallow, oracle of the abyss

--my my my, the Circus clambers ever onward in its parade of the familiar-yet-not. The fates for our protagonists and antagonists, howsoever they may be paired and coupled, have yet to reveal themselves, as they unfold, unravel, and denoue. The RingMaster's charm and glamour are irrefutable, and the Marks show their scars, as the ineffable sounds that erupt from them. Brace yourselves for all to see--

"Ladies and gentlemen and... others, welcome to the Three-Ring Big Top, the Greatest Show in the Whole Wide Worlds! You will astounded and amazed by all the magic and buffoonery in store, and oh, so much more." Not Jack, in top hat, red coat and tails, white pants and cloven black boots, called in a booming tenor voice that the Marks could feel shaking the marrow of their ribs. He didn't wear a microphone, yet none strained to hear.

He stood in the lone island of spotlight in the depths of the sea of blackness around him. Its obfuscation was complete. The Marks couldn't see the person next to one another, so deep was the pitch. All eyes could see Not Jack.

Traught traced his hand between his eyes and the RingMaster, it passed as deepest dark, an eclipse of the moment.

"Brace yourselves, for the show is begun..."

The light vanished, the pitch swallowed them.

The First Mark felt lightheaded. Dizzy. She swooned, catching herself before she gave in to the vertigo. She had been holding her breath, she exhaled and drew in air, gasping. Alone. In the darkness.

Utter silence. Not a word. Not the sound of a murmur, a shift, a breath. Not even her own. The First Mark focussed her hearing on her breathing, which quickened with dawning realisation. She drew a deep breath, then let out a long, loud scream to the very top of her lungs. And heard a deafening silence.

Meanwhile, in the Midway, Uncle had only just escaped getting caught up in a melee that had broken out at the Endless Cheese-thing. One diner had knocked another's and a fight had resulted. He wasn't sure why so many people had gotten involved.

He had run a zigzagging path through the stalls, alleys and lanes formed by the mishmash of tents and stalls, until he had become completely and utterly lost. Traught's Uncle had been losing hope since he lost Traught, Seems so long ago now, back in the parking lot. So long ago.

Traught's Uncle only wanted to find someone to give him directions. No easy task, but why not? He had been met with such spite and undecypherable messages that he had given up. Then he had been thrown into the wild punches and fighting, while the cheese stood alone. He felt deeper in the maze now than before, although no closer to getting anywhere.

He scanned the colourful tents lining a broad path that ran straight to the Big Top. Finally, some luck. He took the boulevard to his right, heading for the Great Tent. Most likely find someone who can help. Uncle looked over his right shoulder at a pavilion made of intricately woven hues of aquamarine, sky, indigo and violet. A single sygil labeled the site. Uncle had never seen it before, and it was too unfamiliar and alien in design for him to remember.

He turned back to his destination. It's gone! He looked back to the tent, then to his empty destination. He looked behind, over his right shoulder, and there stood the Tent. That was behind me! He looked back to the tent. It's design was much different, more like an huge yurt, coloured in bungundies, crimsons, scarlets, and bloods. An equally complex sygil in what appeared to be a different, yet equally alien, language.

Traught's Uncle resumed his journey towards the Big Top. He would not let it out of his sight.

He heard screams erupt from the tent, and didn't abate. He flinched, then quickened his pace.

Inside the darkness of the tent, Traught bounced up and down in his seat, particularly restless, but not particularly distressed. He thrived on the buildup of anticipation.

The First Mark had screamed her throat hoarse. She returned her attention to her body, which shuddered with the effort of her exhausted tears. She sat up in her chair, able to resume some manner of composure, when she felt the carved wooden box in her hands She ran them along the carved surface, the contours and crenellations unrecognisable.

What good is this? Hope it's something useful.

The box slipped from between her hands and fell in her lap. She heard the soft thud of it land in her lap. The First Mark found it again, only with the lid ajar. She reached inside, running her fingers along the lining within.

Empty! I can't believe I'm a Mark! Mind you, I dd eat a lot of cheese and bread. Fair enough. So, I'm a Mark.

"La la li laa," sang the First Mark, delighted to have her voice back. "Hello," she called.

No response. She listened intently.

Alone. How's that possible?

"Now you will learn what is possible," a voice boomed out of the darkness.

The First Mark shut her eyes against the sudden blare of light onto the three rings. She opened them tentatively, incrementally, until she blinked the scene into view.

She sat alone.

The Three Rings were ablaze with activity. In the Ring to the left, a cadre of Evil Clowns tumbled along the perimeter. Evil, because they tripped, poked, slapped, gouged, bit, and pulled the hair of one another. They bounced off of mini-tramps, colliding in midair, landing on the Evil Clowns below, who yelled in unintelligible outrage.

The Ring to the right held a BeastTamer, who wore a green pith helmet, and bore a whip. She kept a line of owls, jaguars, alligators and a three-headed dog. Scorpions and spiders covered the Ring's floor.

High above, Bats flew around a Trapezist, who confidently closed the distance.

In the Centre Ring, an Elephant and a Mouse.

The RingMaster stood between them.

"Now, here's a story for you..."

The lights went out. The First Mark heard the Trapezist fall, screaming all the way to the loud thud, and the softer thud. Then, "uh-oh."

The lights came back on. She found herself in the entire crowd, staring down at the Centre Ring, where an Elephant flipped through an enormous book with her trunk. The Mouse dozed on top of her head. Sleeping.

Dreaming.

"Once upon a time," began the Elephant.

--to be continued--

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 9

2005-11-09T20:51:00.000-08:00

In which Traught's Uncle and the First Mark pass through their respective gates.

from: Not Jack; Book 1 - Into the Dark
by Mat the Hooplah, sepiartist for Saint Seer of Tallow, prognosticator to the passed on.

--well, well, things coalesce, like so much rennet in the gut, as the saying goes. Unless it's otherwise, which might just be the case. Plattersworth has watched the First Mark eat the first four precariously positioned pieces of bread, leaving her but one to finish to break the record. She trembled while threading the bread, the assembled crowd leaning in to watch her. Dare you think on what might happen?--

The First Mark was escorted away from Plattersworth's Endless Fondu, having beaten the old record, and retired undefeated. Plattersworth had awarded her a carved wooden box, inlaid with gems and stones. She hadn't noticed until later that it didn't have any visible seams, hinges, latches, locks or swivels. She marveled at the images etched and painted in, and found her eye drawn back to it again and again.

Before she knew it, she was at the Bit Top! She blushed with excitement, her escorts, had they been human? she looked straight into the chest of the Flap Flipper, who wore a charcoal grey suit in the style of a doorman or bellhop. "Just one moment."

The First Mark took out her ticket, the satisfying crinkle of its dried surface on across her fingers sounded of a certain legitimate authority afforded it. Moreso than most paperwork or currency. "Oh, my!" Exclaimed the Flap Flipper, "I didn't realise. Come right this way." The Flap Flipper flipped the flap, and the First Mark entered, with a grin of self-satisfaction. The Flap Flipper flipped the flap closed behind her.

"Hey, why can't we go in?" demanded one keen observer.

"You're not First," replied the Flap Flipper.

"No. She was the First. Now I'm the Second!" continued the observer.

"There is no Second. Only a First, and you're not her," replied the Flipper, who then fell silent to further argument.

Traught's Uncle had crawled through the parking lot in the flow of the crowd, when of a sudden, it picked up speed. People began to trot towards the gate. What's this? What's this? Not right. This is not right.

He swept up to the box office and the gate, how long ago when i'd given that note to the first in line. The Box Officer was waving people in. "No more room iin the Big Top, but free admission to the Midway!" repeated the monkey, over and over to each new wave of patron.

After carefully counting each head through the gate, the Box Officer shut the gate, and announced, "Please accept our most heart-rendering apologies, for we have reached the capacity for this venue. As any person leaves, another may enter. Please be patient. We're pulling for you!"

The Box Officer posted a sign with the same message, and disappeared into the concourse within.

Uncle searched frantically for a map of the grounds, yet found none. He looked for security guards, and saw none. Although, he did notice a lot of open drinking. He entered the first stall, the Industrious Weapons of the Sweater Brothers. It smelled of a forge, yet was distinctly cool inside. Under the cover of the tent Uncle took a moment to let his eyes adjust to the low light.

There was a plain table covered in a plain white cloth and nothing else. A flap opened in the white wall behind the table, and a figure in business attire and immaculate grooming appeared. "Yes, how can we assist you?"

"I'm lost, and I-"

"Lost! Well, you've come to the right place! You are in the hands of the Sweater Brothers now. I'm Cardigan, by the way. And your name is?" Cardigan reached out a hand to shake. Uncle looked at it blankly.

"I'm looking for my nephew?"

"Oh, I see. Well, maybe we can't help you with that. Who are you with? What outfit?" He looked hard at Uncle.

"Oh, um. What? What outfit? I don't understand."

"Well, you didn't just wander in here, right?" he gave Uncle a nod and a wink, "even the reason is as simple as serendipity, then there is a reason you came here and not any one of the other stalls."

"Of course," said Uncle," yours is the first one I came to."

"Which shows you the power of our influence. You see?"

"Yes. Yes I see." Uncle was humouring them. He had stopped paying them any of his mind. "Is there an administrative office or a lost and found?"

Cardigan chuckled. The chuckle became a laugh which sank to his belly, and eventually, it became a tortured cross of a guffaw and a snort. His face turned red and he could hardly breathe. Uncle was unsure if he should intervene.

Suddenly, the laughing stopped. "Hooo-wee, that's a good one. Now, get outta here before I toss you out on your ear, you hear me?"

Uncle exited swiftly, then followed the crowd, swerving to the left of a bifurcating path, which landed him on Fortune Teller's row. He suddenly got a great idea (which happened at this very juncture for a surprising number of Marks), and stepped into the first card reader's tent.

The Lady of Poultry.

The Lady of Poultry sat on eider down pillows, set on a divan dating back a century or two. Uncle admired the fine silk of her clothes, and the richness of colour in her stall.

"Cards! You wan the Deck!? To hear what it says!"

"Yes, yes. Tell me. Tell me how I can find my lost nephew!" He sat down in chair across the low table from the Lady of Poultry. She clapped her hands, and a giant land-crab scuttled out from the kitchen, and brought a platter with steaming bowls of soup and other, less familiar victuals.

"Here, eat something. This is chicken soup. Here, pate de fois gras on braided egg bread. Go, eat." She handed him a bowl and spoon, and he sipped at the broth. The aroma of chicken was overwhelming, as if the straw of the coop had been part of the broth's bouquet.

"Now, I'm going to flip three cards for you. Don't say anything, just think about the subject. Just feel how you feel about it, and think what you like," the Queen of Poultry said as she placed the deck face down in front of Uncle. "Choose any three cards, place them any way you like, face down."

He cut the deck into three piles, and placed the three in an equilateral triangle, a point towards himself, a side towards the Queen of Poultry.

She flipped the first card. "The Egg"

She flipped the second card. "The Roost"

She flipped the third card. "The Abattoir."

"Well, there you have it. Good luck." She reached for the cards.

"What? No, wait. You can't just take them. I don't know what they mean," Uncle plead. "Please, help me find my nephew."

"Oh, nephew. Well, I'll give you the short version, 'cause somewhere in my heart, there's a memory of compassion. The Egg is your nephew. Young, and inexperienced, yet universally eloquent and simple. The Roost is home, the familiar, the comfortable, stable circle of places and people. That's you, I guess. The Abattoir, is a slaughterhouse. It signifies violent, unholy death, one caused by indifference. That's it. the rest is up to you. I don't know what it means."

A moment later, he discovered himself outside her stall, no closer to his destination.

Inside the tent, Traught had found a seat. He scanned the crowd for his Uncle, but never found him. The huge tent, which looked larger from inside than outside, filled to the rim. Traught's legs fidgeted alternately. The Father of the family next to him kept throwing dirty looks at him, but Traught remained oblivious.

The lights went out, and a lone circle of light illuminated Not Jack in red tails standing tall, crop in hand. Not Jack said, "Dear ladies, and dear gentlemen, permit us to entertain you, and shock you with the great mysteries we reveal. Behold the cavalcade!"

The spotlight moved from the too small car, its maniacal driver wrapped in a straightjacket rolling his eyes maniacally., He took a corner too quickly, skidded, caught an edge, and flipped over. The driver broke through the windscreen, and crawled out, into the spotlight.

The driver, an Imp as much as an Evil Clown, rubbed his headwith one taloned hand, and held his barbed tail in the other. At the sounds of curses and oaths, the Imp scurried away and vanished into the shadows.

Traught quivered with scintillating excitement.

Next, a Court Jester crawled through the windshield frame, rubbing her head with one hand, and holding her cap in the other. She waved her hat to the Marks, and stepped out of the light and vanished into the darkness.

Next, a Joker, two-dimensional, by all appearances, as if peeled off of a playing card, white face defined by minimal black lines fluttered out of the car. It bore a tear across the broad white space near his head.. The Joker fluttered out of the light vanished into the darkness.

Next, a Magician, top hat accordioned flat, black mask, and a wand, raised herself and tipped her crumpled hat to the Marks.. The Magician vanished into the darkness.

Next, a Fortune Teller, face concealed behind a torn veil held together with one hand, crawled out of the car. She held her deck in one hand, but it was short three cards. She had cuts on her leg that leaked crimson. Twinkles of glass shards caught the light from her leg. She limped out of the light and vanished into the darkness.

Next, a Birthday Girl, crawled out, crying, twin streams of blood and mucus pouring out of her nose. She held a string attached to a deflated balloon. She held something visceral in her other hand, and it glistened with anatomical foreboding. The Birthday Girl crawled out of the light and vanished into the darkness.

Next, the trickle of Clowns wearing broken, shattered, bent, battered or rent Evil Clown masks rose out of the car, in a slow, limping procession. One by one, they hobbled out of the light, the last carrying what looked to be a child, or a doll and vanished into the darkness.

The Marks weren't sure whether this was part of the show, or whether they'd witnessed an accident. The silence followed the last Clown out of the car. Then speculative murmur built in the silence, and this tumultuous babble, and expression of nervous uncertainty, grew to a cheer. The crowd had decided, that either way, it was going to pay tribute.

"Ah, my dear attendees," boomed the warm voice of RingMaster Not Jack. "Be not afraid for those hapless survivors of near-calamity. They are but the beginning of the show, and we'll show you what's a metaphor."

The spotlight went dead, and the show really began.

What now blog-servers, what now? What lurks in the darkness, awaiting our cheese-satiated First Mark, tremulous Traught, and a teeming mass of Marks? If any had an inkling, they didn't let on, and likely would have wet themselves had they known. What now?

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 8

2005-11-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

In which the First Mark discovers the depths of Paddlesworth's Endless Fondu

from: Not Jack; Book 1 - the Main Attraction
by Mat the Hooplah, sick scryer of Saint Seer of Tallow, disgorger of strong spirits

Alas, dear blog-servers, we come to the end of an innocence, of sorts, in this twist of the story's tail. Traught, the vanished eleven-year-old has yet to reappear, and his Uncle has faded further and further into despondency with each step he took, swept forward in the peristaltic motion of the crowd. Within the labyrinthine stalls of the Midway, the crowd meandered towards the inevitable conclusion...

And still no sign of Patch. Pell hasn't yet emerged from her office. It faced the other side of the building. Regardless, she was not to be found, yet her vehicle, her cherished chariot remained stranded, unable to move past the throng of Circus-goers.

The First Mark, first past the gate, had visited many of the attractions of the Midway: she had an Alchemical reading of her "singular components" and "essential saltes," She won five of nine games of Riddles and Sticks, and walked away with a Booby prize:

a blue-footed Booby.

The Booby, which the First Mark had taken to calling Flapper, accompanied her to the remainder of her stops: Plattersworth's Endless Cheese Fondu. And in that, there is a tale.

Plattersworth's, or the Fondu Foundry, or Cheese to Please, had row upon row of Marks, from the start of the day until the very last moment before it closed down. Plattersworth, a round-bellied, snickering Fool, stirred the cheese bubbling thickly in the huge cauldron at the centre of the stand. The round counter with stools created a circumference of twelve feet.

Each customer was given a heel of bread at a time, and a ten foot Clown pole with two tiny barbed tines at the far end of it. The rules were simple: if you took your place, you paid your fee and got to eat of the Endless Fondu. If you lost your bread, you lost your seat. Simple.

Except did I mention the the foot fondu forks?

Plattersworth bellowed in her deep voice at the Marks tussling for position. "Sit down you! You- yeah, you, get back there and wait your turn or I won't feed any of you and let you turn to cannibalism for a few laughs! Ha!" She stirred the pot.

Traught's Uncle, having covered about a third of the distance in stuttered listless trudges, caught sight of his car through the crowd. No sign of Traught, but someone had broken the back window. He cursed under his breath at this unfortunate turn, compounding the previous, much larger one. He kept his place in line. Any damage done can't be undone. Besides, Traught's more important than the car.

It's the waiting that's so painful.

He trudged ever forward, holding the dream of reunion close to heart.

The First Mark had managed two heels of bread, and signaled Plattersworth for another. "What? You need more, do ya? Think so? Well, I've got to stir the cheese, don't ya know, otherwise it burns on the bottom and nobody's gonna wanna eat that with three heels of bread, now, are they?"

"Don't care if you have to do what you have to do, dearest Plattersworth. If this fondue has an end, I won't let it be because you weren't giving me my bread. Now, heel to hand, please."

Plattersworth grudgingly complied, dropped it into the First Mark's outstretched palm, and returned to her stirring. THe First Mark tore up the heel into five equal chunks, the smallest number that Plattersworth allowed, and she was sharp.

The First Mark impaled the bread on the barbed tines at the end of the long wooden handle, and she extended it towards the bubbling cauldron.

"Careful, now!" yelled Plattersworth, who was hoping to startle someone into losing their lunch. No luck thus far.
Each loss had been due to the stickiness of the cheese, the ineffectual barbs on the forks, and the ten feet of distance.

The First Mark signaled for another hell. "What, a fourth already? Did you just eat-"

"I did. Another, please." The First Mark felt satisfied. It wasn't just the warm cheese and warming bread in her belly She was satisfying something else. Plattersworth handed her a fifth heel, and turned to witness a lone cube of bread tumble off the fork of a newcomer. First try and they didn't even make the cauldron.

"Sorry lad. Alright, who's next?!" Plattersworth's bellowing set up a fierce if quick struggle between two of the first in line, coming around the stool from opposite sides, and colliding in tenacious confrontation. They both dug n their outside legs to brace themselves against each other. "That's no way to settle this!" yelled Plattersworth at the pair. "Slap fight!"

WIthout missing a beat, the two slapped each other's faces until both their cheeks were red and swollen. The rest of the Marks stood back in amazment at the ferocity of the battle of the palms. Another fork emerge without its charge.

"There, you two! There's a seat over there for one of you..." Plattersworth paused, waiting for one to take the initiative. They eyed each other suspiciously, leaning slowly towards another escalation of violence. "You, sit over there. You, stay put. Fine, here are your sticks."

Plattersworth returned to the churn.

"Plattersworth, can I have a sixth heel?" asked the First Mark.

"What? You can't be serious!" Plaatersworth was beginning to think that her astonishment might become sincere if this was to keep going. "Oh, you are serious. Very well, here's another heel."

"Thank you."

"I hope you choke on it!"

The First Mark didn't choke on the sixth heel. Or the seventh. Or even the eighth. The ninth.

"Plattersworth, may I have a twenty-third heel of bread?"

"Impossible! If you finish this one-" Plattersworth paused in mid-sentence to watch the Marks escort, well, passing back over their heads while picking pockets, another defeated fondu hopeful. "You can't finish this one. that would be a record."

"What? Don't tell me that."

"I won't say another word about it. If you succeed, I will promise you something very special."

"What?"

"It's better if it's a surprise. I hope you do well." Plattersworth fell silent.

"Wha- ugh." The First Mark carefully broke her heel into five pieces, as she had done with all the previous ones, This one had had a huge pocket of air when it was baked, so there was only a thin layer of brittle crust and very little to grab the fork.

She couldn't ask for another until she'd eaten this. She'd seen the treatment of those who complained. A hot glob of cheese catapulted with Paddlesworth's big, wooden spatula.

The First Mark threaded the first shell of crust onto her fork, and eased it across the distance to rest at the cauldron's rim.

Now, what do you suppose the First Mark will do at this juncture? What strange gift is Paddlesworth willing to offer, and what folly would come from accepting it. One must beware of gifts from Fools., their thoughtless good-intentions could get you killed.

And in the background, the growing restlessness of the crowd. Something's brooding in the air, clouds girding themselves in shadow to the West. Will anyone ever make it to the Big Top itself? Let's hope not, dear blog-server, for all our sakes.

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 7

2005-11-07T21:42:00.000-08:00

In which the gates are opened to all comers

from: Not Jack; Book 1 - The Way of the Mid
by Mat the Hooplah, treasure trover of the illisicrets of Saint Seer of Tallow, pipeline of deceased

Finally, dear blog-servers, here you find an interesting mix of the tragic out of what is traditionally comedic. A child gone missing in the midst of a menacing mass of Circus-goers, his frantic Uncle searching through the mass in vain.

A store's manager still missing since the small hours of the morning, when last seen, falling into the mesmeric charm of an Evil Harlequin's guise.

And the scuffling at the box office gate, where the First Mark, arrived by whimsy, now withheld her position with bullish ferocity. All manner of person tried to charm, coerce, nudge, skirt, distract, intimidate, shove, or shame her out of her spot, yet she held ever fast.

The First Mark saw a figure enter the box office, and such was her angle of perspective that none of the others had seen it. She now had an advantage. She readied herself for a crush from behind, and leaned more heavily on the shelf in front of the only box office window. A delirious man approached, shoving through the crowd desperately.

"I don't care who you are, get the hell away from here. Now. I mean it!" She angled herself towards him, keeping a peripheral eye's view on her flank. "Git!"

"You don't understand. I've lost my nephew. I've looked all over, and I haven't found him. I just want you to pass this note to the security guards in passing." he held a note in his left hand.

The box office wicket slammed open, and within sat the Box Oficer, a Monkey who operated the till and rolls of tickets with feet, hands and tail, while regarding the window casually, eyes down. "Yes, how many, please?"

"Please," the note was within her reach.

"One," she slid her currency, a token of her time and labour, to the Box Officer wih her right hand, and took the slip of paper from the man in her left. Probably a phone number, thought the First Mark, who received her ticket, emblazoned with a embossed, golden number one, and strode into the Concourse.

"Next," intoned the Box Officer, beginning a repetitious cycle of action upon transaction into the small hours of the next morning, when the Circus would close and move on.

Uncle watched his note disappear within, in the hands of the First Mark. He had noted her face, that he might confirm that she'd done as he'd asked once he got in. If I get in. the line must have doubled since I last saw the end of it.

Uncle scurried back along the length of the line, skimming over each face yet again, many of them already becoming familiar. He passed clusters of friends in heated conversations about, "fire" and "cannon" and "tigers" which did nothing to calm his nerves.

He passed the surly people who had refused to hold his place. One stared at him through empty eyes, another stared right through him, the others ignored him altogether. The one who had spoken stumbled midsentence, stalled at the word "balk-"

Uncle continued on, spying faces he hadn't yet seen, keeping one eye open for his nephew, the other to keep from tripping. The crowd spilled through the lanes of the parking lot. He contiuned following it around a second, then a third turn around the cars, filling the lanes from side-to-side.

Astounding. How did it fill up this quickly? He jogged between parked cars, passing by his own, on the off chance that Traught had returned there to wait.

He hadn't.

The crowd wound round row upon row of parked cards, imprisoning them in its coils. Uncle joined it at its tail-end, which grew again, as more people joined immediately after him. He tried to greet them, but they refused, one and all, to make eye contact with him.

Within what seemed like minutes of finding a place in line, the entire lot was locked, tightened like a knot. Nothing could move in or out, and frustrated shoppers and Circus-hopefuls alike honked their displeasure in monotonous bleats of the cuckhold's horns, and circled around to find parking at adjacent lots, streets, schools or funeral homes.

Within the lot, not a single vehicle moved. The line, Uncle knew, moved, some distance ahead, well over half the distance where I was refused a place in line, and again, he would follow the river of people, this time within, still holding hope of finding his nephew within the Circus Midway.

But as he watched the line grow behind him, curling back towards the big box mall in tightening spirals, he realised the immensity of this gathering. He looked up at the red flag whipping in the winds lashes.

Something downright peculiar about this. 'One day only' he'd said. That's really odd for some reason. But look at this crowd. It doesn't add up. Not at all. Why didn't I hear about it? I read the papers, there must have been something. How did Traught know about it?

Meanwhile, well ahead, the First Mark strolled the concourse, unsure where to begin. She considered each in turn. Along Fortune Teller's row, there were Card Readers, Scryers of Tea Leaves, Entrails, Holy Texts, Palmists, I-Ching Casters, Psychics and an Alchemist.

Along MadCap Alley, the Tea Party, Croquet, Triple-Cranko, Trumps and Wonders, Riddles and Sticks, Horseflyshoes and Plattersworth's Endless Cheese Fondu.

Along the Hall of Mirrors, Magic and Magick, ineffable and quickly forgotten. No Mark ever left knowing what they'd witnessed, or remembering aught but a vague satisfaction at the money well spent.

Along the Bazaar of Distant Districts, fabrics, artifacts, vases, a collection of artistic miscellany. The First Mark took note of a finely woven tapestry or rug? She gazed at the image more closely. It depicted daemonic clowns dancing around a giant flame resembling the BigTop.

"What's this? This is a bit dark for children, don't you think?" the First Mark asked.

"Perhaps. I wouldn't ever disagree with you," continued the unctuous voice of the sales woman, the Barter Queen, "yet that is ever for adults to contemplate, not children. Children have yet to learn such dark symbols, as there thoughts and feelings are still becoming inured to the barbs and sharp edges of the world."

"Of course." The First Mark continued browsing throug the rugs each bore dark images, often of beings in theatrical makeup, or masks, in straightjackets, wigs, costumes and makeup, around them black lightning rose upwards!

Gumbo Row afforded food of all types, recognizeable, more and less depending, with names like: Clown Gravy, Cotton Candy on a Pixie Dipping Stick, Taffy, Caramels, Fudge, Hard Candies, All-Day Suckers, Snow Cones and on and on.

The First Mark made it through the Avenue of Temptations, which boasted Barkers, vying for attention, calling to her and all the Marks that followed in bold attempts to entice their patronage. Offers include potions and poultices, love and lust, games of chance and opportunity.

The First Mark eschewed them all, and approached the flap of the tent.

"Step right up ladies and gents, don't be shy, the greatest show on the Whole Wide Worlds is about to open! Prepare yourself for the marvellous and the magnificent, the mundane made magical. The Wheel truly turns in our favour this day! Come one, come all. Come, enter."

And the First Mark, as ever, was the first to enter.

What will become of the fated First Mark? Will she survive the mysterious madness within, or will she escape by some miraculous deus ex machina? What has befallen Traught, and will his Uncle ever survive the loss?

What more's yet to come?

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 6

2005-11-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

In which Traught and his Uncle discover that the Circus is something to get excited about

from: Not Jack; Book 1 - The Sixth Sheik's Sixth Sheep's Sick
by Mat the Hooplah, chronolographicographer of Saint Seer of Tallow's surfing of hell's endless channels

--once again, we return to the innocence of babes, the child barely into his second decade, eagerly racing towards an ineffable spectacle that will leave him... altered, if that isn't too much foreshadowing, for there comes dark shadows with this tale, beyond the mysterious disappearnace of the inquisitive Patch, and the obliviousness of his parone, Pell. Be aware--

The Sun illuminated the low fog, the waves of light caromed through water particles, washing out distant details of the morning. A complicated, chaotic assembly of poles, woven across the vast parking lot like an asymmetrical spider's web, the Big Top at its centre, the patient, black and white at the centre. Hands drew tarps across the skeleton, pulling a tight skein over it.

Before the first Mark had arrived, the box office had been placed at the gateway into the Concourse, the Midway and the Sideshow, all of which were included in the price of admission to the Three-Ring Big Top Circus. No mention of Not Jack on the marquee.

The first Mark arrived at the gate. She read the sign posted in the box office window, which read, "Box Office Opens at 9AM sharp, and not one second sooner. See you then." She considered getting something to eat. The wait would be a couple of hours yet.

The first Mark noticed cars pulling into the lot, come to a stop in scattered spaces close to the box office, disgorging their drivers and passengers like soldiers hitting the beach, ready to die for their cause. They wanted in line.

The First Mark stayed put, and defended her place. Those that crowded around here were not pleased. Explitives were used. The First Mark stood her ground, and released a tirade of filth and profanity that blushed the bluster of the belligerent gate-crasher-wannabees.

And as simply as that, the Circus drew in a crowd whose sprawl would encompass the big, box mall, and all the vehicles in the pall of its morning shadow to the North West. Without any stir from within, from Hand, Harlequin, or Patch.

As the Sun crested the buildings on the horizon, and blazing off of the reflective windows of buildings adjacent to the parking lot, blinding the Marks in line. They flinched to avoid facing South East, from which the Sun shone directly, only to catch the reflection from the North, where the big box mall's shadow would otherwise have lay unopposed.

The line of Marks grew and grew and grew, as the morning ticked by minute by minute, the Sun crossing the sky, shifting shadows behind everything he sees. The line grew wider, becoming a tightly-knotted cluster of Marks vying for first. They didn't let the First Mark's tenacious grip to her title intimidate them. Although it cost them, in position, and pride.

The First Mark had swift ankles, which she used to glide other people's feet offline, and in another direction. She could do so with great subtlety, when called for, however, her immediate situation called for something more brutish, and less tactfully. The profane shouting match had been proof of that.

Joining the line, far far away from the First Mark, yet still proximate enough to allow for the hope of a pair of reasonable seats, were Taught and his Uncle. Taught's Uncle had secured him with a seatbelt, tightly, not so much for protection in the case of a collision, but to keep him restrained. His level of fidgitry precluded disastrously destructive mishaps.

Taught had sprung free from the car as if released from an oubliette after a life time of punitive oblivion, and making up for time spent not moving. He bounded across the parking lot, catching his hip on one, spinning off of it, then caroming off another to spin back into a lane, where he resumed bounding.

Kid's as good as dead. What the hell?! "Taught! Watch where you're going! I'll catch up, you find us a good place in line!"

"OK! I sure will," with that, Taught darted off, catching his elbow on a car mirror and knocking it off its adjustment. His Uncle followed at his own, lazy pace. "Hurry up though!"

Uncle took his time getting across the remaining few rows of cars. Something felt strange to him, and he looked up from his morning stupor to assess the situation. He spied the transformed sprawl, taking inventory of its features:

Big Top? Check. Concourse? Check. Parking lot full of cars? Check. Big box sore? Check. Uncle couldn't quite tell. He approached the crowd lining up, and his stomach fell. Uh-oh, something wrong here. He looked up and down the line for Taught, who had just been ahead of him.

Uncle realised that the line was longer than he'd expected, and he followed it towards its end, eyeing each face for that of his nephew. Several heartbeats later, he felt the first pangs of concern at not having seen Taught yet. The faces in the crowd unsettled him, although he couldn't quite pinpoint what its source might be. Something sinister.

Uncle continued his pursuit, carefully eyeing the assembled along the length of the line all the way to its ends where newcomers and hopefuls joined as he arrived. Wha-? He's not here? How- He can't have disappeared!

Uncle relied on his anachronistic notions of civic co-operation when he asked the fellow who looked to be about his age and disposition if he would hold the spot in line for him.

"What? Hell, no!" was the reply, with murmurs of righteous assent bubbling up around him.

"Never mind. Gotta find my kid," Uncle said, mumbling to himself under his breath.

"What? Lost your date already? Maybe your goat got a better offer! Ha!" Guffaws and Hyucks followed Uncle on his return trip down the line. He hesitated calling out Taught's name, as this would attract undue attention, and might warn others to the presence of a missing child.

Uncle's concerned scrutiny of each face was enough for anyone who might be looking for a lost child.

A few people were, although not there own.

And even they, too, would regret having come to the Big Top under the Stars, as it was sometimes known.

What indeed is this strange flapping flag attracting to itself? Belligerent competition for p0sition? What dark influence does this enigmatic midway have over those who gather under the undulating, red triangular standard atop its highest point? What malfeasance may have befallen Traught? What wonders within, one wonders?

But scant more patience, dearest, dearest blog-server, and the secrets kept by inveigled narrative shall indeed be unveigled.

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 5

2005-11-05T19:46:00.000-08:00

In which evil things happen to good people, and evil things happen to evil people, and good things don't really happen, or otherwise, what kind of story would you have?

from: Not Jack: Book 1 - Those who laugh last...
by Mat the Hooplah, linguistic condensation collector for Saint Seer of Tallow, spirit's gutterduct

--As we last saw, dearest blog-servers, the titular relevance is not always apparent. Such are the evils of the Clowns as they prepared their dire machinations for the unsuspecting Marks, who even in the early morning darkness are stirring with anticipation, preparing for their ineffable pilgrimmage. Read on, and protect both your aqueous and vitrious humours from what's to come--

Pell looked through the spaces between the smears of grease on the window towards the mall. No sign of Patch. Coast is clear. Wonder if I can make a clean getaway?

"Will there be anything else?" asked the waitress, wired and fleet of foot for someone up this early.

"No. Just the check," said Pell as she reached for her moneyclip.

"Sure, but it's not a check. It's a bill. Don't know where you've been eating, but sounds like a good deal to me." She tore the receipt, left it on the table, and left at a dismissive, lethargic pace.

Can't imagine she expects a tip. Pell left one anyway, exactly fourteen percent. She played poker in her spare time, and marvelled at how money could be used to communicate so much, without uttering a word. Exactly one percent less than the accepted gratuity indicated that Pell was willing to go to some trouble to calculate the amount to the fraction of a penny, and leave it, including the fraction of a cent owing.

Pell kept slivers of pennies in her change purse for just such occasions. She left the diner, returned to her vehicle, and drove across the parking lot to her reserved space. Still no sign of Patch, which meant that he's either given up, called someone else, or run away to join the damned Circus, which would be the best of all possible options for him, really.

She locked the vehicle's doors, set the alarm, and entered the building by scanning her security badge across a scarlet patch on the wall. She vanished within.

Unfortunately for Pell, she didn't pay any attention to the Circus behind her. Had she taken but a moment to look, she would have seen that the snaking skeleton of pipes that a handful of Hands had been affixing together, and covered most of the parking lot, closing foot by foot over the path she'd just driven to her parking space.

Will she ever learn?

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 4

2005-11-04T19:21:00.000-08:00

In which the show must go on.

from: Not Jack; Book 1 - Tentacular Spectacular
by Mat the Hooplah, transubstiator for Saint Seer of Tallow's spiritualistical regurgitations

--and so on with the tale. The apex of the Circus tent a flag, flapping in long red, rivulets in the snappy, gusting morning zephyr, as if announcing the location for a great convergence, in the middle of the black oceanic sprawl. And so it was--

Aususular Hands scurried about in the early morning darkness, setting up poles in a chaotic, jumbled structure radiating out from the Big Top at its centre. Patch couldn't tell what the Hands were constructing, it was only skeletal as far as he could see, and they avoided his approach. He never got a good look at any of them.

Patch circled the tent, looking for a trailer or office, or someone who may be able to point him towards the administrative authority of the caravan. Each remained occluded in the morning gloom. He came back to his starting point, and he hadn't found an entrance to the Tent itself. Curious.

To be certain, Patch circled the tent once more, checking each seam carefully. He detected no means of egress. To his sharp eye for detail, the entire surface of the tent was one, continuous piece of fabric. Incredible! He crouched down to grab an edge between his fingers, so compelling was the material.

"Hel-lo. Can you be hel-ped?" A quavering voice inquired, unless it enquired. Hard to be sure.

Patch jumped out of his skin (not literally mind you, plenty of time for that later). He turned and looked at the person who had spoken. A Harlequin! An evil Harlequin at that. Patch turned his eye, attentive as ever to detail, to the figure.

The Costume was an intricate checkerwork pattern interweaving white and black in quilted details. The hat, collar, shirt, girdle, leggings and boots captured Patch's eye, and he found his mind's eye drawn into it, always at the very threshhold of recognizing something in the evasive chiaroscuro.

"Helpless then? Or hopeless?" The Evil Harlequin seemed sincerely intrigued, as if he'd just caught a previously unencountered species of guppy. "Yes? No? Are you flipping or flopping? Sweeping? Mopping? Chirping or Chopping? Come come, now, how now brown cow?"

Patch heard the sing-song but was unable to decypher the cryptic cadence. Like a plutonium rod, his eyes burned for the Harlequin's colourless costume, and so was his mission consumed in it.

So much for the power of authority! What grave deceipt awaits our gullible manager? No doubt he will be given an appropriate welcome by the RingMaster. Read on in our next installment, gentle blog-servers, and prepare yourself for dark twists and sinister turns as the tale slithers its narritivistic tendrils into the depths of occluded shadow.

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 3

2005-11-03T17:44:00.000-08:00

In which the Big Top's presence creates a sensation

from: Not Jack: Book 1 - No More Clowning Around
by Mat the Hooplah, interlopreter for Saint Seer of Tallow, ingestilocutor divine

--our tale continues, with a bipolar eleven-year-old jumping bean with the unlikely name of Traught coercing his Uncle to take him to the singular specaticle of the Three-Ring Big Top, Not Jack's Circus of infamy, as we shall see. Dare to read on? Be warned that once read, you cannot unimagine it--

The Marks turned up to the Three-Ring Big Top in droves in every town where it pitched its tent. Everybody likes a Clown, after all.

The posters that had gone up overnight, advertising the Circus for the very same evening, announced the Greatest Show in the Whole Wide Worlds, one night only. At the bottom of the poster, an unusual paragraph, detailing the Circus' strict ethical code regarding its treatment of animals.

It read: "The Three-Ring Big Top Circus, Inc. does not believe in the capture, imprisonment or training of animals against their wills. Although the Circus does boast a vast menagerie of beasts both wonderful, terrifying and fantastickal, let it be known that each of these dragons and tygers have arrived in our company by choice, and are free to leave at their discretion. They are equals in our company, all children of Comedy and Tragedy, and we bid you welcome them with your all your resounding hearts!"

The Big Top itself had appeared in the empty parking lot that sprawled like an asphalt ocean, a bobbing flotsam and jetsam of box stores clustered in the centre of its vast abyss. The Tent itself took up a total of twenty-three parking spaces, more if you counted the guide wires, and the parts of the tent that overlapped the lanes.

The box-store mall manager, Patch, stood steadfastly akimbo, watching the early dawn Sun bounce off of the thick white stripes, billowing in the chill Autumnal breeze. He didn't like the looks of the tent. He had heard nothing about the Circus, and considering the level of importance he accounted himself, that was impossible.

Patch's mood improved when he spotted the property manager, Pell, eased her dauntingly huge vehicle, that must have embodied the idea of "off-road" somewhere in its luxurious, lavish interior. Perhaps not.

Pell slammed the door, turning her attention straight to Patch's obsequious grin. If I only could have talked him out of the report, I could still be sleeping. Jackass! You'll get yours! "Morning, Mr Patch."

"Morni-"

"Yes, yes. What is it? You don't like the Circus? What, afraid of Clowns?" She wasn't going to have any of his crap this morning. Somewhere through the hazy dawn, a cup of atrociously bad coffee awaited her, and she anticipated it with growing thirst.

"Clowns? What? I like the Circus OK, but-" he paused for but a fraction of a second, yet it was enough for her to interject,

"OK? You don't sound like you like it. What's wrong? They set up on your parking space? Out with it!"

"Who are they? I mean, do they have a permit? Have they got permission to be here?" He felt his confidence returning, he was going to force her to act in her capacity. She noticed the smug undertones to his questions.

"Well, tell you what, you go check their paperwork, and if they don't have any, I'll have a talk with whoever's in charge. In the meanwhile, I'm going over to that greasy spoon, and I'm going to drown my lethargy in black, caffeinated goodness. OK? Great, see you in an hour." She turned her back on Patch, and returned to her vehicle.

She drove off, leaving Patch standing in the billowing puffs of exhaust in her wake. He tightened his jaw, and stalked across the empty asphalt to the tent.

Patch was ready for confrontation, from fast-talkers, and carnies. He'd heard every pitch and excuse over the years, and prided himself on his powers of discernment. He wasn't ready for anything, which would have served him better, as we shall soon see.

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 2

2005-11-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

In which the saga of the dark Three-Ring Circus under RingMaster of Ceremonies Not Jack continues, and woe to those within. As ye shall see, this tale is not for the feint of heart.

Excerpted from: Not Jack: Book 1 - Clowns Prank Among Us

by Mat the Hooplah, tanscrivener for Saint Seer of Tallow ingestor of nether-spirits.

---we join the continuing story as the Three-Ring Big Top was sealed, darkened, full of agitated Marks and mysterious Evil Clowns hiding in shadow. This combination elicited most diabolical shrieks and screams from within. The intensity with which these screams were delivered could not be mistaken for anything but sincere, unrestrained terror--

"The Circus is coming! The Circus is coming!" an exuberant cry of uncontained delight echoed its echoes off of the empty white walls.

"Hey! Stop running around like a loonatic," was the best stab anyone was willing to take at standing within the path of an eleven-year-old Force of Nature. The loonatic running around continued, unabated, for another quarter-hour. Finally, Traught finally slowed his pace, yet without diminishing any of the intensity of his excitement.

"Yeah, but, the Circus is coming! And I get to go!" Traught's cheeks bulged like red jaw-breakers, so wide-spread and spreading still was his grin. He swumg a thumb at his chest. "Me!"

"That's great, Traught," his Uncle continued, after a pause indicated that he was on his own. Shoulda kept my mouth shut. "Who's taking you?"

"Why, you are Uncle!" Traught's expression risked faltering for a fleeting second, however, such was his resolve that it only resulted in the flicker of an eyebrow hair, which his Uncle had noticed, having learned Traught's intricate signals over the course of eleven years of inexplicable tantrums and blood-curdling screams.

"I am? I am! Of course. Which show do you wish to attend?" here, Traught's Uncle was hoping t o buy some time. He wasn't sure he wanted to take Traugt to the Circus. There would be fudge and cotton candy and... he refused to think on it any longer.

"Which show? What are ya, nuts?! There's only one show! It's today. Today. TODAY!" Traught resumed dancing, pounding the floor, shaking the floor under Uncle's feet.

"Enough!!! What time's the show?"

"Uncle! You forgot! You forgot your promise!" Traught was still jumping, like a pogo stick.

"Uh," damn kid, "that's not it, Traughtsky. I'm just getting, uh," ah, to hell with it, "I just don't want to be late," true enough, "we can't miss the Clowns, now, can we?" not so true, that one. Kinda hate damn Clowns. Repugnant.

"Uncle, you promised to take me to the Circus today, and it's time to go right now!" back to full-on jumping, Traught wasn't waiting for any answer other than immediate departure.

"Well, Traught," uh-oh, how to break this, "I don't remember-" Uncle stopped in his verbal tracks. Traught had paused in mid-jump, and had landed, as stiff as a board, on the hardwood floor. His facial expression frozen in a paroxysm of crestfallen innocent trust. "-uh, that is, I can't find the tickets."

"Tickets? What? You are a loon Uncle! You buy 'em there." Traught bounced out the door.

"He- I- He- I. Oh, never mind," Uncle grabbed his jacket and keys, and left to take Traught to the Circus.

"Good-Bye, Uncle," sneered one of the others in the room, "hope you have an Exquisite time."

Uncle closed the door silently, then turned to the boy, "So, Traught, what Circus is this? Cirque du Soleil? Shriners? Jim Rose?"

"Uncle, you are a loon. It's the Three-Ring Big Top."

"Never heard of it. Oh, wait, is that the one with Pee Wee Herman?"

--to be continued

Evil Clown Fiction: Episode 1

2005-11-01T15:56:00.000-08:00

In which PentWhistle reveals the details of the assault upon our cultural anchors with a metaphorical hacksaws. Rusty metaphorical hacksaws.

Patient Blogservers,

Mat the Hooplah, dread chronicler of the glossolalic revelations of Saint Seer of Tallow, has finally submitted the first of his scrivenings since the ascension of Not Jack from the realms of below this past Hallowe'en.

I have been advised that Not Jack, whatever he, she, it they may be, has arisen among us to counter the myopic attention to the infinitesimal details of the minutia of our world's material aspect. Not Jack, and whatever cadre of clever Clowns follow the RingMaster's whip, are immaterial.

It's all in your head.

-PentWhistle

--

Not Jack: Book 1 - Three-Ring Big Top
as scrivened by Mat the Hooplah

Not Jack, wearing an oversized black magician's top hat, and brandishing a crop, previously used in infernal initiations, to direct the crowd into the ten. The Circus had come to town, an unexpected delight for local citizens, considering no one had seen any advanced notice of it.

The Big Top, most aptly named, due to its mountainous presence, and the swirl of black on white patterns, fractals of hypnotic delight drew the eye inward, like the barbs of a carniverous plant, swallowing the Marks in the masses.

"Step right up ladies and gents, don't be shy, the greatest show on Earth has opened, and your in line for opening night! That's right! There's only one opener and it is always the most magical and inspired night of any performance! Clowns, acrobats, tumblers, jugglers, magicians, harlequins and tricksters!"

Not Jack ushered them, and the Marks, dumbfounded at their good fortune of stumbling on the Circus when least expected, and on opening night even.

Not Jack grinned a smile to chill the spines of daemons turned on wheels of fire, from painted cheek to painted cheek, closing the flap behind, and sealing in the Marks.

the show was about to begin...

Marks filled the bleachers to the highest edges of the great flapping walls, still below the towering trapezes. The centre of the space, the stage, the focus of the gathered attention remained in shadow, in darkness, hidden from view.

The lights went out, and a lone circle of light illuminated Not Jack in red tails stood tall, crop in hand. Not Jack said, "Dear ladies, and dear gentlemen, permit us to entertain you, and shock you with the great mysteries we reveal. Behold the cavalcade!"

The spotlight wavered wildly, finally settling on a car, too small for the Clown who drove it, as their Red-wigged head stuck out the open sun-roof. A giant key stuck out of the roof behind the Clown, turning, hitting the driver in the head with every pass. The key turned more and more slowly as the car coasted to a stop in the dead centre of the space, the spotlight still upon it.

The driver opened a small side door, and unfolded a six-and-a-half-foot frame out of the car. Following, an Evil Harlequin, wearing a long-nosed mask, waved to the Marks in scintellating enticement. The Harlequin vanished into the shadows.

Next, a Court Jester, a tumbler, wearing multiple grotesque-comedic facial expressions, smiled a smile for sharks to envy. The Jester vanished into the shadows

Next, a Joker, two-dimensional, by all appearances, as if peeled off of a playing card, white face defined by minimal black lines. The Joker vanished into the shadows.

Next, a Magician, top hat, black mask, white rabbit, and a wand, tipped the hat to the Marks. The Magician vanished into the shadows.

Next, a Fortune Teller, face veiled, shuffling cards in one hand, raising a crystal ball in the other. The Fortune Teller vanished into the shadows.

Next, a Birthday Girl, hidden behind cake makeup, holding a big red balloon in one hand and something ineffable and sticky in the other as she made her way across the spotlight. The Birthday Girl vanished into the shadows.

Next, a river of Clowns, all of whom wore Evil Clown masks, or Evil Clown makeup, their true countenances hidden, poured out of the miniscule vehicle. Any of the Marks who had been keeping count had abandoned it, the clowns moving too swiftly.

What a variety of Evil Clowns: Wicked Clowns, Nasty Clowns, Vile Clowns, Despicable Clowns, Reprehensible Clowns, Dark Clowns, Clowns of Shade and Shadow. The Evil Evil Clowns vanished into the Shadows.

Next, Evil Clown Dolls walking under their own power; Evil Clown Puppets and Marionettes pulled their own strings;

Wonderful illusion thought the Marks.

The Dolls and Puppets vanished into the shadows.

Not Jack snapped the crop as the last Marionette vanished into the shadows.

At that moment, the gasps of wonder had fallen to tense whispering. The spotlight went out, leaving the entire tent in darkness.

Whispers fell to silence.

In the empty lot without, no one was present to witness the screaming.

--to be continued

scary boo!

2005-10-31T19:00:00.000-08:00

in which PentWhistle learns the true meaning of Hallowe'en

dearest confusticants,
your impeccable patience is rewarded. PentWhistle has returned with dire news and a new direction.

Saint Seer of Tallow and Mat the Hooplah have been in deep trance since October 21st, when the balances of Libra dipped ever towards the shadows of the Scorpion. They have but emerged today, on this most Hallowe'ed Eve, and they have much to share.
Mat scribbles, despite the numbness in both his ambidextrous forearms. He writes upside down and backwards as he rights from write to left. Soon we will be transfixed by his transcriptions.
However
something significant has happened.
While the veil between our world and the Underlands has grown very thin, a huge surge of souls, violently disposed by forces of nature under the guise of storms at sea and in the desert, bleeding blood and oil into the depths of the Earth, were met by another Spirit, struggling against the tide.
This being had been waiting in the Psychopomp's vestibule, reading back-issues of Life magazine (an article on the birth of Plutonium, as it so happens) patiently.
This being has made it known, through the larynx of Saint Seer of Tallow, that our world will descend further into the unrecgonizeable.
To Wit:
our acknowledgements are ever out of balance. With the overemphasis of the light, the darkness has remained ignored beyond its characteristic occlusion. This, the being insists, is an unspeakable crime.
the spirit of Nihil demands acknowledgement in keeping with that of the birth of the Sun as celebrated during the season of XXXmas. Three days for the birth of the Sun, three wise men, three-part spirit during the season of Winter: XXXmas eve, XXXmas, and Boxing Day.
the spirit demands that the birth of Nihil be recognised with the three days
october 31st, Hallowe'en
November 1st, Mid-Autumn
November 2nd, Dio de los Muertos
in the Season of Decay.
the spirit of Nihil, calling itself "Not Jack" has been birthed, today of all days, and wanders among us on the physical plane.
"Not Jack" is evil, and garbs itself in the skin of a Clown.
be ascared. be very ascared.
-PentWhistle
ps this is not a joke
pps no, really, it's not.

aghast and aghoul

2005-10-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

although Hallowe'en is by its nature dark,
the blackness that poses as enlightened works of well-intended intervention,
has yet to be fully explored.

There are yet horrors for our modern world that are so new that we have yet to appropriate them into our world of mythologies. These are the ills that we do not accept, for which we avoid taking responsibility, from which we distance ourselves.

yet these ills and ails are us, which is hard to admit.

Enter the Evil Clown as Ghoul -

the Ghoul, a favourite around the graveyard, has morbid sensibilities and tastes, and in its own comical obsession with consuming death, of incorporating the rotting flesh of our corpses into its own being...

which isn't all that different from organ transplantation.

Hence, this Hallowe'en, why not dress as a Neo-Ghoul[tm]?

There are many variations of this oldie with a twist. To wit:

Organ-transplant surgeon
accessories: Pig Liver, Monkey Liver, Scalpel, Research Grant, Waiver

Organ Broker
accessories: Wad of paper where heart should be

Organ Donator (willing)
hollow zombie
accessories: driver's license with organ donation card section filled to include everything

Organ Donator (unwilling)
accessories: IV drip, confused look, one kidney

Medical Student
costume works best if accompanied by any number of organ donators (willing)

Have a safe and scary Hallowe'en!

-PentWhistle

Hats off to Hallowe'en Witches

2005-10-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

How I learned to stop worrying and love the balm

"What's this? What's this?" griped LoveStrange the Clown, "How long has it been since the weird systers have joined our happy little Three-Rings?"
"Too long, already, I fear," replied BungWorks, "they've really put a fright into the acrobats."
"How's that?" asked Pants Mahoney.
"They're afraid of the fall, whereas before, they didn't believe it a possibility."
"The systers told them that?" asked LoveStrange, rising at the evidence against them, already plotting their dismissal.
"No, the systers didn't say anything. They looked at Ballsey's acrobats. One drew a thread, another measured. The third looked up at the highwire balancers, and cut the thread clean through." BungWorks fell silent, the rest following suit.
-from Chronicles of Three-Ring by WatersWords.

--

The above little fiction, although but a mere fingerwipe across a steamed mirror, speaks of much greater concerns than the opining of concerned Clowns and circus-chaff alike. Why so much attention paid it by Clowns?

and not just in the fiction...

The systers, three Witches, watching the threads of mortality measured out, and snipped, do so without malice. Their act may appear harmful, hurtful, evil, however, they simply measure what each of us is allotted: one lifetime. no more. no less.

they do not suffer from the illusion of time.

neither do Evil Clowns.

outside of time, are these ilk.
what milk had they nursed on
to make them so cursed?

So, in honour of Witches, in all their Evil Clownish manners, here is the Witchtide remembrance, the Three-Clown Salute, in all its fantasmaglory:

Three-Clown Salute
-Name withheld to ensure innocence

"Honk! Honk! Honk!
We bellows with our horns,
to our Devil-known Systers,
To cacophinate the morns,
awaken mothers and misters,
To celebrate with corns,
and gum-kernel blisters!

"Honk! Honk! Honk!
We give 'em a squeeze,
these three horns of ours,
For the blood to freeze,
while the rain never pours,
The Systers to please,
lest one angers, one scorns and one scours.

"Honk! Honk! Honk!
Three Systers' gall,
Look out below,
Even demons pall,
as the strings grow,
and they fall,
to the winnow."

Love your broom.

-PentWhistle

hats off to hallowe'en hats

2005-10-13T21:14:00.000-07:00

"The Magic of Hats is that anyone can wear one."
-ButterStripe the Clown

Yes, fellow Hallowe'enies, time ticks us closer and closer
to our great day,
and greater night,
of All Hallowed Eve,
and another on
Dia de los Muertos.

The day when the spirit world is closest to ours, when the veil is thinnest,
when the gates of the Afteworld open wide,
to admit the sream of fresh souls,
fresh spirits,
descending,
under the soil,
and after time.

It's best to be prudent,
and by no means take this too seriously,
nor too lightly.

Perhaps it should be taken gravely, and smirkily.

The disguise, the creatures of the Underworld and Afterworld:

Witches, celebrating Samhain roam the streets in packs of giggling rubber faces and pointed hats;

vampires, preying for succulence at every door, something to quicken sluggish blood;

zombies, wandering randomly, yet systematically, seeking fulfilment of an insatiable hunger;

and a profusion of,

other

interpretations.

The archetypes evoked during this masquerade festival can be uniquely evocative of a localised pantheon. These are the moments when magic is most potent, and uncontrollable. The Gates of Hell are open, after all, as are those of Paradise.

The fawns, the fairies, the sprites, elves, puckish pranksters, and mischievous mites, satyrs, animals of all types, all of whom represent the spirits of the Pastoral Paradise, and they too have a place in celebrating, in escorting the Spirit of the Harvest to the Underworld.

This is mid Autumn, and pumpkins are the last harvest of the year.

spiders weave their webs, and gorge while nursing a huge egg sac.

nights creep earlier and earlier, this being the midpoint between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice, and crepuscular critters, like the bat, are more commonly seen.

Hence the affectations.

Taking into consideration, the bats, the spider egg sacs, the cooler weather and earlier nights, and the proximity of the Spirits of the Overworld and the Underworld and the Afterworld, it is necessary, nay, imperative that one

wears

a

hat.

Avoid bat or owl guano in the hair, as with spider eggs, keep your head warm, and your thoughts under cover. The last thing you need is an Eight-Year-Old Demon reading your mind and stealing all of your candy.

Now that you're in on the secret about headwear, there are so many options available that you'd best begin here:
here

Hats work like masks. Each has a particular personality which it imposes upon yours. There are powerful archetypes associated with the Top Hat,

the Bowler, the Ten-Gallon, the Sombrero, the So'Wester, the Fez, the Beanie,
the Cap, the Fedora, the Bear-Skin,
the Tiara, the Crown, the Bonnet, the Hood, the Cowl, the the Laurels,
the Antlers, the Daisy-Chain,

and many others besides.

Once chosen, the Hat most appropriate, for both its wearer and the occasion, will appeal to the Quick (so you won't have to spend a night in the Clink) and the Dead (so you won't spend a night to remember you'd wish you'd forget).

And nothing gauche.

-PentWhistle

Inside the Big Top

2005-10-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

Within the Realm of Running-Away-and-Joining-the-Circus

It's cheaper than therapy.

The bright, broad white-on-red stripes decorating the billowing flaps loudly snapped in the capricious zephyrs of the mundane everyday.

From without,
what mysteries lurk within?
one wonders.

The promise of fun, in the candy-striped edifice, its flimsy walls foreshadowing something of the nature of the place.

Temporary. Mutable. Transient.

From without, the imperative ticking of time, as the deadline for the magical apparition of the towering tent of marvels and the miraculous approaches with the earth's wobbly spin, as if to advise

be quick

or?

Glimpses through the triangular flap of the doorway the only entertainment allowed to the poor and the penniless, with their dreams of entry, of participation, of escape.

escape.

However, is running away with the circus an escape from something?

if so, what?

Is running away with the circus an escape to something?

If so, what?

If not escape, then can it be called "running away?"

what appeal within the mysterious folds of canvas?

Why, Mystery, of course!!!

the mystery of the unknown within. The Sun shines upon all without, illuminating every detail to dulled familiarity, however, in the shadows of the big top, something lurks behind the colourful facade. Something intriguing. Something compelling. Something extra-ordinary.

and so we enter.

and we discover, that clowns, amongst all the denizens of the circus,
are truly
the Evil ringleaders.

Run away.

Run, run away.

-PentWhistle

A Nose by any other Name would Still Smell Sweetily

2005-10-11T08:00:00.001-07:00

The Game of the Nose.

"There are far more things to regret having ingested,
than are dreampt of in your philosophy, Mat."
-Saint Seer of Tallow

The red, bulbous nose that swells off of the tip of the Clownish proboscis, represents the disequilibrium of the drunkard, the dotart, the dreg. The red nose, tumescing with vericose vessels, announces itself proudly to never have refused a house red, or offer of invigorating, intoxicating imbibibles.

The protruberence, exaggeratedly jutting itself out, demanding attention, greater in the estimation of the audience than its bulk necessitates, pulls the Clown behind it, as if the nose contained the will that the rest of the body lacked.

Surrendering one's behaviour and reponsibility to the nose, to the drink, to the intoxin.

Any wonder why Clowns walk on flopping feet, awkwardly forcing themselves to overcome self-imposed impediments? They represent the subjugation of will to a higher power, or at least to stronger spirits.

The Clown holds themself in contrast to the upstanding ideal of the backbreaking work ethic, the sober attention to meticulous detail in executing the trickle-down demands of the market as interpreted by analysts, economists and other legitimised opinion-makers.

What good a drunken peon to undertake such serious business? What use a disoriented rub-a-dub in pursuing dreams of capturing occidental capital?

None.

The Clown is a target for such imposed imperatives, yet ultimately the foil. Despite all sincere intentions, the Clown is unable to undertake their task, their chore, their assignment, due to the overwhelming preponderence of the nasal influence.

This is also the reason that Clowns don't typically operate heavy machinery.

-PentWhistle

Fowl Play

2005-10-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Giving Thanks for not being a Turkey

"I'm gonna knock you out!
Marmoset knock you out!"
-LL Clown J

The flocks of turkeys cringe as the weather turns to the chill crispness of Autumn, and the human animal surrenders to the insatiable hunger from tradition long-lost into the mists of myth, and the legends of Witches, Zealots and Death.

Our Seer has a compendium in which MattheHooplah has collected channeling of the spirits of meals from the Afterworld.

As is prudent, I remain
-PentWhistle

--
Dare if you dare, to glance at the gleanings of Saint Seer of Tallow
Below
--

"They... they just gobbled me up... they were like- animals... and... and... the sternum! oh my- I- I can't continue..."
-Regurgitation of the Spirit, vol 3, Fowl and Turnkeys

"Well, funny thing is, in the afterworld, all the meat is dark meat..."
-Ibid.

"What do monkeys wish for with the wishbone? Of all the things they could wish for, do they wish for the turkey to be alive again? Oh, noooooo."
-Verbal Lashings from the Afterworld - Birds of a Feather

"And then shall we render the fat from their flesh,
that it might be blended with burnt charcoal,
and grain milled to a fine powder,
and slowly poured water,
and agitated to smoothness.
Then did the boat travel from place to place,
lightening its load,
pouring rendered fat sauce,
all over everything.
Render unto the rendered and all that.
Tell that to the egglings, and then truly will they remember to brush their combs
before bedtime."
-Regurgitation of the Spirit, vol 2, Fat of the Land

"What's the matter Sanders?
Chicken?"
-Dark Helmet, Spaceballs

Costumes for Evil Clowns

2005-10-09T10:11:00.000-07:00

to be confused with Evil Clown Costumes

What can an Evil Clown wear on Hallowe'en,
without the
dreadful
social
embarrasment of instant recognition?

Simple!

Choose any one of the following clever disguises,
and you'll be the hit
of
the
party!

or you'll scare the hell out of children and the elderly.

either way,

fun fun fun!

The "Hide-in-Plain-Sight" Collection
*Pirate
*Ghost
*Necromancer
*Scarecrow
*Evil Clown

The "Trojan-Horse" Collection
*Trojan Horse
*Trojan
*Horse

The "Hide-and-Feet" Collection
*Penguin
*Sea Lion
*Letter "L"

The list could go on,
but the question remains
should it?

-PentWhistle

But Seeriously, Folks

2005-10-08T10:10:00.000-07:00

"Disturbing Eavesdroppings from the Afterworld.
Very disturbing droppings, indeed."
-Sir Cuit of Round, while spending the night in a haunted chicken co-op

While it may come as supernatural to some,
channeling spirits from the afterlife isn't all it's made up to be.
Sure, any of us can channel the spirits of the quick.
No problem.

Class clowns are experts. Actors have an inkling. Thespians are most certainly accomplished in the art.

However, Seers are someones special. The Dead don't so much talk as natter, and it's not easy task to sift through the transcriptions. MattheHooplah has been doing that since he first met Saint Seer back in the early days.

"Yeah, it was really messed up. Like, Seer, he was...
Crazy. It was really something, y'know...
It was something."
-MattheHooplah under interrogation

without further adieu,
I retire
for now
-PentWhistle

--
See Below the Mystery of Saint Seer of Tallow
--

"Aside from that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"
-Favourite Punchlines of Statesmen of the Afterworld, vol. ii

"I've been noticing a lot more frogs coming through.
Do I want to know?"
-Verbal Lashings from the Afterworld - Rachel Carson

"I remember when Alfred and Nils used to stick their tongues out
behind Werner's back, but he could never be sure they were doing it."
-Truths Behind Nucular Technology

"And in the years,
with the double doughnuts,
in the time of the GREAT CLOWN EMPEROR,
when all things serious are ridiculous,
and all things ridiculous are serious,
and no one cracks a smile,
except at the most unfunny thing of all,
then truly will mud pies hit the fan."
-Glad They're Not Talking About Us, Vol. 19

"Honestly, I'm glad I'm dead. You people give me nothing to work with."
-Verbal Lashings from the Afterworld - Jonathan Swift

More Seer, Suckers

2005-10-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

"For all your Hallowed Eve needs:
PentWhistle's SlideWhistle-Blowers Clown Miscellany Emporium, Incorporated"
-exerpt from discontinued marketing campaign precision-targeting clowns as consumers

As if yesterday's weren't enough, dare you to read on with the dire enterpretive channeling of spirits of the Afterworld?

Apparently so.

-PW

--
Sayings of Soothisimilitudinousness, by Saint Seer of Tallow
--

"I remember when I was a little girl,
and ruling the Empire of the Black Sun!
I was eight years old [titter],
if memory serves,
and after nine thousand years
of the Afterworld,
I've had time to reflect on it [giggle].
So, after all this time,
what with the great conjunction coming,
I've decided to reascend.
Pretty soon, too.
Even by Earth's reckoning. Do you think they still remember war?"
-Chatting with Restless Spirits, 7:29, Autumn 2005

"I'm dead?
[inordinately long pause]
That explains a lot."
-Chatting with Restless Spirits, 8:212, Autumn 2005

"Scraped the decompost from the bootheel,
and placed it delicately, deliberately, daintily,
inside a plastic bag,
then in the garbage.
[pause]
Do you know how much longer I'm going to have to wait to eat it?"
-WormWords

"Clever clever,
but you won't catch me,
because I'm not dead.
Although you may be.
Did you have the chicken tartare?"
-More Things I Regret Having Ingested

Clowning around with the Afterworld

2005-10-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

"As Hallowe'en approaches
Evil Clowns take off their masks
and costumes. This is much scarier,
and what is known in the business
as 'Reverse Masking.'"
-Anonymous DragQueen Makeup Diva, Atlanta, 1956

In honour of the approaching All Hallowed Eve of the Day of the Dead, messages from the Afterworld will be gleaned by a local Seer of repute for interpretation for delighted readers. There's no telling what may be channeled. Titles are provided by obsessive chronicler MattheHooplah.

Beware, none of the opinions expressed hereafter are those of your humble PentWhistle.

--
Prophesis by Saint Seer of Tallow
--
"Yay, tho I have heard the voices of the despised demised, and not yet gone mad,
fully, completely,
tho I have the echoes of their yodelled conundra within the valleys of my brain, in the cavern of my skull,
tho I have drunk deep of the River Lethe,
I can't seem to forget a damn thing,
altho,
it must be said,
I can't really get the chronology straight."
-Crab Nebulon Ponderences, 4:2, Volume 7

"Speaking to a pumpkin,
of late turned into a pie,
or pied, as it was said,
or communicated rather,
I have learned the following:
Pumpkins are inappropriate pies for throwing at the dastardly.
Cream pies are preferred,
as any squash that hasn't lost its gourd will tell you,
in a manner of speaking."
-Chatting with Restless Spirits, 5:213, Autumn 2005

"Every unheard whisper, every intimation fallen into deaf ears, every cry gone unheard, every plea unheeded, every desperate entreatment that has every died upon hopeful lips,
speaks to me.
Every second thought, self-censored atrocity gone unuttered,
yet I hear.
Every aspiration of cruel harm, with serrated daggers guised as words, for all unspoken linguistic vitriol,
I have heard.
Can you guess what I'm going to be for Hallowe'en?"
-Chatting with Restless Spirits, 7:23, Autumn 2005

"Clam bakes! Clam bakes!
How dare you remove that mayonnaise from my sideplate!
Can you retrace your steps to the cauldron of carapaced,
and fish us out a soft-shoed soft-shell?"
-Things I Regret Having Ingested, Too

"And once the veil breaks thin,
and you witness death's toothy grin,
and it speaks to you of all your sin,
now's the time."
-Found Poems, or, Plagiarising the Anonymous

Black and White and Red all over

2005-10-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

"when the world is reduced to black and white,
send in the clowns."
-PollyChromy the Clown

Without a doubt, the multi-hued cavalcade of colourful conundrum presented in the anything-but-humble uniform of the clownish, the foolish and the harlequinesque, is enough to set one's eyes to readjust their colour spectrum to something infra-yellow and ultra-green.

[select one of the following:]

However,
Yet,
Although,
Even though,
But,
Nonwithstanding,

[continue at your leisure:]

there is more to this colourful pigmentation of fabric and flesh than meets the eye - there's all that the eye does not see that the mind does.

what good is a myopic third eye?

The black and white, polar extremes of pigmentation, illumination, and opinion, are the unattainable opposites between which the everyday occurs. To presume the position of the black or the white is to abandon one's humanity - for we are the shadows and shades of grey in between, or so it might seem.

the colours, the stripes, spots, dots and dashes, zigzags and swirling spirals throw a symbol of chaotic variance and incompatibility in the unrealistic straight-edged boundaries defining the black & white position.

the colour undermines oversimplification, without offering alternatives. It exists as if to say, "you're taking yourself too seriously, and besides, you're oversimplifying the issue for the sake of lazy thinking under the guise of clever determination. May all your buffoonery show itself for what it is, reductio ad absurdum."

the binary pole of the black and white is destroyed, with the introduction of polychromatic systems, that annihilate the notion of the twin poles. Where does puce fit on the colour scale of black and white? Or amongst greyscales?

Nothing so simple for the purveyors of posh purples. Do not reduce regal violets to so much pixelated dust! Leave the dreams of colourless ephemera to contemplation by the divine, and wrap yourself in paisley swaddling, and all will be fine.

"I see a black door,
and I want it,
paint it,
red!"
-TickStabber the Clown

"Oooo - but paint it with puddings!"
-BladderSeep the Clown

make of it what thou wilst.
-PentWhistle

Choose your Produce Wisely

2005-10-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

"Only throw the rotten tomatoes."
-GrandElf the Clown

Rotten tomatoes, including those that have been rendered inedible via other means, such as dousing with pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, nematicides, genetic tinkering in the dark, irradiation, and so on.

These, like farmed salmon, have a tendency to explode on impact, with a consistently wide splatter radius. Don't settle for anything else when you're going to the theatre.

-PentWhistle

A Clownwork Orange

2005-10-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Chief Character and Clown Culture

"That tree, it kinda reminds me of the world. See, the leaves are the heavens, the trunk is where we are, and the roots are the underworld."
"That snake wrapped around it. It kinda reminds me of our spines."
"No! It's evil! Kill it."
"OK. Hand me that giant sponge mallet."

-Exerpt from Waiting for Bozot by Mule CatBack

A Clockwork Orange was banned in countries throughout the world in the year of its release. The violent nature of the subject, and its cynical, dark themes were too upsetting for decision makers at the time.

No question.

[Honk!]

ARRRR BE YE WARY OF THE ROTTEN SPOILS OF THE FILM THAT FOLLOW - RRRR

[Honk!]

Our dearest adolescent, Alex, the chief instigator of the story's "ultra-violence," and his crew of Droogs, break into a house wearing their gang uniforms, and masks.

The uniforms (in the film): black boots, full length white long john's, dancer's belt, suspenders and black hat.

The masks: grotesque clownish faces with phallic nose. Very phallic.

In this great guise, Alex rapes and murders the woman resident.

Now, there's no doubt that rape and murder are pretty universally condemned as evil acts.

Alex is a rather Evil Clown. And in this guise does he commit his most heinous act. Is he feeling immortal, like so many adolescents? Is he licentious while obscured behind the thin farcical veil he wears? Or is the guise of a Clown enough to drive any wearer 'round the bend.

It would certainly explain a lot.

-PentWhistle

Clown Effects

2005-10-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

Where do Clowns come from?

"Now, go thou into the World,
and find thee Big Red Shoes,
that thou might flop around a bit,
and a water-squirting flower,
and the holy bottle of seltzer water,
and gaudy jacket,
and bent chapeau,
and a huge bow tie,
that thou might appear more ridiculous in mine eyes,
and rainbow suspenders,
that you might remember all the naughty times,
and the undone suspenders,
and gentle spankings and smitings and so forth..."
- glossolia or licentious hubris by ChatterWaul the Clown

The effects of the Clown, the trappings, the uniform by which we distinguish a Clown from a Mail Carrier, reflect an aesthetic derived from Vaudeville and early film.

The Clown, as that lovely chap Chaplin embodied, is our underdog. Often poor, the Clown carries the costume of the hobo, the homeless traveller, tossed along on fortunes winds like the fertile soil of the Great Prairies. They're chief antagonists, the unreasonable, the selfish, the constabulary, and the cruel tyrants hoarding their hoard with tenacious greed.

The Clown wears the uniform of the wealthy made ridiculous.

The top hat becomes bent, the top collapsed. The tuxedo and bow tie, in classic black and white is put at odds with the explosion of clashing colours and patterns in the Clown's ensemble. It's enough to make the cones of your eyes throb with overload, asking for a nice daily newspaper to restore black and white familiarity.

The butonnier becomes the squirting flower.

The travesty of adding soda water to fine, single-malt Scotch is taken to the offensive in the Clown's big, white gloves, with the seltzer bottle as impromptu crowd-control device.

The polished shoes, a sign of one's stratum in many cultures, tumesce with long, red, floppy insinuendo on the feet of the Clown.

Is Irony Dead?

In pursuit of an answer...

If a Clown Suit can refer to the typical clothes worn by a Clown, as well as the two- or three-piece uniform of the business-set, is irony even possible?

or is it intrinsic?

or is it just obvious?

For example: "Let me talk to the clown in charge of this circus!"
- sarcastic retail customer or sincere circus-goer?

death of "Is Irony Dead?" thread

GarFin the Clown once posed such questions to a mendicant. Out of the brain pan and into the friar.

-PentWhistle

Evil Clowns of Distinction

2005-10-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

"Well, I guess we'll just have to add another one to the pantheon."
-WanTilly the Clown.

Now, it may be simply obvious, however, there has been a very recent addition to the ascended. There have been many noteworthies pass us by in the 20th Century:
Charlie Chaplin,
Bill Hicks,
and Andy Kaufman.

[Litotes and oats and little lambsey disey.]

The 21st Century has already ascended an Evil Clown of ginormous exposure.

Hedwig
and
the Angry Inch.

BEWARE TO THE UNINITIATED --- BELOW THERE BE SPOILERS --- BE YE WARNED --- AND FOREWARNED
-SlabLustre the Clown

Yes, Hedwig is our crowned queen of the new centuries crooked clownedness!

Such elaborations of head wig and maquillage, such costumed finery, such colour, such performance...

and yet

such cruelty, such anger, such vengeful intent, such disparate desires and clashing circumstance...

"all sewed up" indeed!

As Hedwig gives that lucky/poor soul the carwash, how many squirmed at the sight? That could be us looking up into the occluded darkness of revelation. Man? Woman? Top? Bottom? Boxers? Briefs? Too many answers, and yet, what can one do but smile - or gaze transfixedly in horror.

As Hedwig shreds the hope of drag-queen cruise song and dancing, there is but jealous cruelty in her face, jet black and full of rancorous loathing.

Ah, indeed is Hedwig an Evil Clown. For ever does Hedwig pursue the origin of Love, that noble pursuit, that goal of so many a knight in shining armour off to butcher people of different cultures who had really neat stuff.

Send in the Clowns.

So, if Hedwig's a herald for our Century, then she broadens our understanding of Evil Clowns to include Drag Queens and Drag Kings - who have a certain je-ne-sais-quoi distinguishing them in this from transvestites and cross-dressers.

The Transgendered have expressed the same premise by breaking the defintions of sexual identity by living on both sides of any dichotomy presented.

"So, then, this woman- at first I thought she... he was a woman -told me-"
"You mean turned you down."
"Whatever. He- this person told me that she wanted to have sex with a gay man as a gay man."
"And you weren't happy enough? Or was she a top?"
-FixedWig and TrappyTrous, overheard plotting the untimely end of something

Welcome, dear Hedwig, Welcome.

All hail her wiggishness with a 32 horn salute:
[honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!

][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!][honk!]

-PentWhistle

What Question do you ask a Mirror

2005-09-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

"Hey, don't get mad at me! I only pointed out your chains, I didn't put them on you."
"Who did, then?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
-Bartlesmear the Clown and PlayDoh

maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

what do you think?

Irony Defeated

2005-09-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

"Who's more foolish? The Fool or the Fool who fools the Fool?"
-Twitch the Clown

"Fool me once... shame, shame on me... Fool me twice... you can't get fooled again."
-The Clown of the Moment

Irony, thought dead since a brief resurgence in metatelevision, has finally and truly transcended its descent into popular, pop-cultural sarcasm into something... other.

Irony develops from our perception of the opposition between an apparent meaning and its intended meaning. Taoist Irony.

Sarcasm develops from our perception of deliberate misuse of a term for its opposite to insult, deride or amuse. Sarcasm is more pointed than Irony.

Paradox develops from our perception of unresolved coexisting, extreme opposites, otherwise believed impossible.

Antinomy develops from our perception of resolved coexisting, extreme opposites, otherwise believed impossible.

[above defitions from The Big Book of Big Words by Y. Laphe]

"I don't know what's funny, but I know a joke when I hear one."
-TickMock the Clown

-PentWhistl

All Hail Hurlers of the Pie

2005-09-28T10:05:00.000-07:00

"better a little egg on one's face,
than to face the gelid ladle."
-Gutterslice the Clown

Now, what's the harm in a little pie?

Quite a bit, according to the reaction of Ralph Klein.

A line from the film The Godfather seems relevant to this reaction:

"She threw it...just to make me look ridiculous! And a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous!" -Jack Woltz

Seems like someone's on to something.

[honk honk]

-PentWhistle

Myth of the Gateway

2005-09-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

"What's that crystal you're on?"
"Sucrose."
"Far out!"
-Overheard at the Killer Cereal Convention

It has been written and said time and again that marijuana is the gateway drug - that it in and of itself isn't particularly harmful, however, it leads to those illicit narcotics which are. It is the first step in a downward spiral.

And sugar?

How is it that sugar isn't lauded as the gateway drug of all time? How many children are pacified with small doses of the crystal we treat like a treat?

"There are far many more of those than can be counted on fingers and toes."
-Anonymous Botch

Why don't we treat cannbis like this?

Cream pie projectiles just wouldn't be the same without it.

-PentWhistle

Clowns vs Snake-Oil Salesmen

2005-09-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

who's fooling who?

Both Clowns and Snake-Oil Salesmen share a long history in our collective culture. The difference is that Clowns have continued to live by their handfulls of synonymous appelations (not to be confused with their Appalachians), such as fool, trickster, harlequin, troubadour, and so on.

The snake-oil salesman has diversified, becoming Pressmen, Marketeers and Public Relations tale spinners. How they have evolved, into specific niches of redirection and misleading. Where, oh, where are our champions to liberate us from fallacious flogging of flip-tops and fashionable finery?

Look at the screen before you. Do you see your own reflection? Do you see past that mirrored surface, into the virtual worlds beyond?

What use snake-oil? Is it but petroleum by any other name? Thunderous lizards, snakes and alligators, pressed roughly into so much crudeness. Snake-oil and lizard-oil - good for what ails you. And like snake venom, how often the cure resembles the dis-ease.

The Marketeer convinces you that the undesired effects of the oil are but "side" effects, and like the circus sideshow, are kept out of plain sight. A Clown convinces you of nothing, their lies aren't pretense - all of their words are considered misleading, silly, fictional.

The Marketeer tries to convince you of their own legitimacy, whereas the Clown undermines all legitimacy. Illegitimate legacies in their wake, the Clown can but laugh at claims that lethal Clostridium botulinum toxins are the secretions to youthful appearance.

so, which is more youthful: the laughter of a Clown, or needles of numbing interjection?

-PentWhistle

Circus Sideshow and Communication of the Weird

2005-09-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

the Wayward Fates and why not believing in them won't help you
-Wagglestrop the Clown

Clowns and the Circus, the Big Top, the Carnival (or Carnivale) are a strange equation.

The Clowns inhabit the big top, commuting by sardine-can motorcar, unicycle, or cannon, to express the joyous frivolity of the infantile Bacchanal, a relief from the pains of the world, a respite from adult responsibility.

For outside the Big Top, outside the charmed world of wonderment at daredevils, death-defiers, and magic tricks lies the sideshow). This freakish display inhabits the Mid-way, halfway between Hell and Home, perhaps.

The Sideshow is an opportunity for the unworldly to get their view of the mysteries of the world, otherwise shrouded behind veils of secrecy, propriety, and embarasment. Such wonder at the unique, the manifestation of the unseen obscene, has lost its sublime nature to the mundanities of science.

Thus does the Penguin Boy becomes the thalidamide baby, the Pinhead becomes the microcephalic, the Siamese Twins become conjoined, the Alligator Man becomes ichthyotic. The sublime wonder at these folks becomes the mundane suffering of victims of spiralling biological fortune.

Where are the Gods of the Circus of yesterday? Are they but relics in museums of medical curiosity? Are they among us, people as any other people, a freak among freaks. For fear not, oh worldly one, we are most certainly freaks. Even our oddities are a confirmation of our humanity.

Has the language of science replaced the poetry of perception? Cold, imposed impartiality replacing passionate engagement?

"Only" and "Just" become the most dismissive of introductions. "It's only just a conjoined twin."

Where is our outrage at the bleeding of our passions?

-PentWhistle

Why are Children supposed to like Clowns?

2005-09-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

who's laughing last, now?
-Jostlestone the Clown

More children appear to dislike clowns than like clowns, as much as that can be said of anything. At parties, when clowns have been hired as entertainment, the potential for awkwardness increases. Adults in masks, hiding their faces, are often cause for alarm. Why should all the colour be cause for distinction? Wigs and gloves?

It's a recipe for anonymity, which has been known to lead to all sorts of Hearts of Darkness.

Mayhap the adults, ever responsible for providing such entertainment, seem to find the clown a birthday mainstay, as much as the tradition of the cake, candles and singing the forbidden song.

Much more cultish in these terms. No wonder children respond to these underlying themes of anti-socialism at a time of coming together. Jugglers, manipulators, illusionists, they warp perception, and impose images upon the collected imagination.

After long exposure, adults have fallen under their charm, their chromatic mesmerism. Children sense an unease originating from the sight of a stream of clowns pouring out of a tiny car at the bigtop.

Or facing down bulls.

They are supernatural. They play with moods, teasing laughter, or sealing it in.

Clowns are ever hiding something.

What's not to love?
-Pentwhistle

How to Recognise an Evil Clown

2005-09-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

A Thesaurus for the sore us.
-Wavesward the Clown

Evil Clowns can often be difficult to detect, as they are well-skilled in the arts of misdirection, redirection, confusion, entropic encouragement, mesmerism, masking, concealing, make-upping, making up, and up-making.

They don't refer to themselves as Evil Clowns, and may often be discovered to answer to similar appelations, such as: Dastardly Devylls, Destructive Daemons, Imperious Imps, Terrible Tricksters, Fey Fairies, Sinister Sprites, Stark Spirits, Troubling Troubadours, Lying Laplandish Laplanders.

Evil Clowns will laugh at everything and anything, any thing and every thing.

If you invite them to parties, they'll part "i"s and "e"s and no one will remember which comes after the "C." But there's no "c" in party.

The distinction between a regular clown and an Evil Clown is subtle, for a clown who is evil is not necessarily and Evil Clown.

To wit.

A clown who is evil seeks to uphold assumptions, playing to expectations.

An Evil Clown seeks to undermine assumptions, playing on expectations, while possibly breaking someone's brain.

A clown seeks to evoke what's comedic, an Evil Clown seeks to evoke what's tragic. Both laugh.

A clown would never close their bit with a joke like the following:

"There's times when all it takes is an old-fashioned live-burial in concrete to quiet those voices in your head."
-Anonymous.

Isn't that just too grievin' rich?
-PentWhistle

How to be an Evil Clown

2005-09-22T10:01:00.000-07:00

Twisted advice from an unscrupulous Clown

Today, the Equinox, we rest on the great fulcrum of time. Tomorrow, the tilt into the darkness. How do you plan to ride the way down?

Here's a thought

Become an Evil Clown!

Lesson 1

One:
Be born Evil, and become a Clown. Generally frowned upon by almost all members of society, with the odd exception that make this a rule of thumb. John Wayne Gacy for example.

Two:
Allow your currently non-Evil non-Clown self to become possessed by the spirit of a trickster god of some pantheon or the other. Andy Kaufman, without a doubt.

Three:
Study hard and become a psychoanalyst. Dress in full Evil Clown regalia for sessions. Ex; Carl Jung (although, his interpretation of "Evil Clown regalia" is somewhat understated).

Four:
Talk incessantly about a broad range of inflammatory subjects until you get an obvious, overt reaction from someone. Make a note of which buttons belong to whom. Once you've got a good number of buttons, a dozen or so, start playing whack-the-gopher. Metaphorically, of course. Ex; Acerbic talk-radio hosts.

Five:
Smile knowingly at everyone you pass. Ex; The Buddha.

Six:
etc...

--
Lesson 2

The punchline of every joke relies on antinomy, and you can't have antinomy without anti-om-ny.

what's the difference between a joke and a riddle? Here's an illustrative example:

what's the difference between a chuckle, snicker, laugh, giggle, guffaw, titter, and chortle?

see?

-PentWhistle

Laugh Into the Darkness

2005-09-21T09:53:00.000-07:00

Is Irony truly dead?

Today is the last day longer than night for a spell. Into the darkness, and shadows to dwell, huddled around the dying fires, dwindling until the fell pine logs ignite in the depths of the day's darkest, longest night.

The whistle slides still.

See the sublime in the vile, the alive, the evil, and laugh, laugh, laugh. See the reason to laugh at the curled shape of a human body, maybe breathing, maybe not, lying foetally, ignored by passers-by struggling to look away, or look forward. What's not to laugh about?

The festivals of fire, cities world wide celebrate, with fireworks displays, magnificent to behold, as toxic heavy metals are shot through the sky, burning, raining down over the water below. Plenty more bottles of where that came from.What's not to laugh? Celebration by poisonous rain of fire? It's grievin' hilarious!

Citizens consume huge amounts of gasoilne driving military vehicles on city streets, for which their fellow citizens fight on foreign soil, in need of military vehicles. Gasoilne is less expensive than water, but plenty more barrels of oil and pints of blood where that came from.

Hahahahahahaha. Oh, grief me, that's too rich.

Introducing more poisons into the food chain. Mmmm, mmmm, pesticides and genetically mish-mashed something or other sure are tasty, especially when combined with stress and distress, turning poultry into product. Mmmm, mmm, tasty terroryaki.

HaaaaaaHaaaaaaHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

! Indeed, it's either laugh or scream, or fall through the cracks in between.

Is irony truly dead? Not at all. It now lives in life as well as our imagination. What's not to laugh about?

- PentWhistle the Clown

Evil Clowns, Jokes and Riddles

2005-09-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

"the turn is just the thing, to return conscience to the king."
- Rattlestick the Clown

The role of Evil Clown as Trickster and Joker is already well-established, and although incarnations exist elsewhere, the face of the Evil Clown seems to be a phenomenon particular to the Americas.

As tellers of jokes and riddles, one of many skills, clowns in general and Evil Clowns in particular have developed a sense of the turn. The setup establishes expectation, and the punchline undermines it, causing an emotional reaction, if turned well, or well turned.

The reaction can be anything from revulsion at the disgusting, laughter at the amusing, admiration at the witty, gormlessness at the abstruse, or anger at the unexpectedly personal.

Robert Heinlein describes the nature of laughter in "Stranger in a Strange Land" in which the protagonist, Michael Valentine Smith, a human raised in Martian culture, finally groks why humans laugh.

"Mike through his head back and laughed - and went on laughing, uncontrollably. He gasped for breath, started to tremble and sink to the floor, still laughing."

then he explains it as

"' I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.'"

then

"'Of course it wasn't funny; it was tragic. That's why I had to laugh...suddenly I saw all the mean and cruel and utterly unexplainable things I've seen and heard and read about in the time I've been with my own people - and suddenly it hurt so much I found myself laughing.'"

from "Stranger in a Strange Land" Berkely Medallion Books, NY, 1961 p299

I think that the clown makes us laugh. Whether the hurt comes out as laughter or screams, its a harsh purgation of spirit, and in these foul days of lost compassion, can its reemergence be so unexpected?

May all your tragedies be melodrama.

HP Lovecraft wrote of an Evil Clown

2005-09-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

and Nyarlathotep was his name.

Nyarlathotep, the messenger and soul of the gods, servant of Azathoth, lord of all things who gibbers madly at the centre of the universe, attended by dancers, drummers, flutists playing chaotic tunes beyond time.

Nyarlathotep appears more frequently as a referent than a character in HP Lovecraft's fiction.

He appears in the dreams of Walter Gilman in "The Dreams in the Witch-house" and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," and is mentioned in a number of others.

Although much about this character remains occluded, his trickery, in terms of a trickster figure, can lead to death, or more commonly, insanity. In symbolic terms, the death represents an annihilation of self, as opposed to a more traditional view of the death of a perspective and renewal of self. For traditionalists, Nyarlathotep's humour is dark indeed, in the context of the fiction in which he appears. For those anticipating enlightenment with rebirth, he serves them annihilation, and with that, crushes hope. The insanity belongs to those who will not surrender to annihilation. They retain their egos, their conscious selves, at the expense of its smooth, healthy function. For those those anticipating retaining their minds, they do, however, in a much altered state: madness!

evil tricks indeed. And what lessons from this Nyarlathotepic apocalypse? The past, in terms of expectation of the narrative's symbology, has been annihilated as has the future, in terms of hope of remaining complacent without recourse. Different than revising history or positing speculations, an annihilation erases it completely. The familiarity of our expectations collapses, leaving only the present, the now, the eternally changing, and it is dark. And it is unpleasant to behold our own cruelties, yet, how else are we to transform them into something else?

What's so Evil about Evil Clowns

2005-09-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

addressing the evil clown phenomenon

the evil clown isn't so much evil as unpleasant. This unpleasantness owes to the evil clown's tendency to play tricks that force one to come to terms with one's issues. To whit, the egocentric loudmouth demanding attention from all the assembled gets his pants yanked down. Evil, maybe. Unpleasant? Definitely.

The evil clown stirs the pot, lest we become too comfortable with our self-negligence, and surrender to acclimatisation to our unhealthily fulfilled desires.

The evil clown presents our nemesis, and serves a summons for poetic justice. The actions of the evil clown are not intended to be cruel, although it may certainly appear so, the difference hard to distinguish on occasion, but to undermine ill-conceits with blunt, squeaky hammers.

The evil clown serves up single-serve apocalypse, as our world collapses around us, forcing us to reconstruct.

The cruel clown is something altogether different.

The evil clown makes us uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as considering the deepest darkest depths of the ocean at midnight, and how far one could plummet before all hope of resurfacing were lost, and how much further to go then...

So, why then has the evil clown resurfaced at this particular time and place? We see it all about us, for some time, growing in its audience as the media of transmission expand. The Joker laughs at cruelties the world over, and has for decades.

Why do we need him? Why has he come among us? What message has the Joker wrapped up in a twisted turn of his crimson grin?

2005-09-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

Trickster as Evil Clowns - stories

from "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," by Joseph Campbell ch 1.4 The World Navel (p. 44)

...an anecdote from Yorubaland (West Africa), which is told of the trickster-divinity Edshu.

One day, this odd god came walking along a path between two fields. "He beheld in either field a farmer at work and proposed to play the two a turn. He donned a hat that was on the one side red but on the other white, green before and black behind [these being the colors of the four World Directions: i.e., Edshu was a personification of the Center, the 'axis mundi,' or the World Navel]; so that when the two friendly farmers had gone home to their village and the one had said to the other, 'did you see that old fellow go by today in the white hat?' the other replied, 'Why the hat was red.' To which the first retorted, 'It was not; it was white.' 'But it was red,' insisted the friend, 'I saw it with my own two eyes,' 'Well, you must be blind,' declared the first. 'You must be drunk,' rejoined the other. And so the argument developed and the two came to blows. When they began to knife each other, they were brought by neighbors before the headman for judgment. Edshu was among the crowd at the trial, adn when the headman sat at a loss to know where the justice lay, the old trickster revealed himself, made known his prank, and showed the hat. 'The two could not help but quarrel,' he said. 'I wanted it that way. Spreading strife is my greatest joy.'"

footnote: Leo Frobenius, 'Und Afrika sprach.... (Berlin: Vita, Deutsches Verlagshaus, 1912), pp. 243-245.

Compare to Prose Edda, "Skaldskaparmal" I ("Scandinavian Classics," Vol. V, New York 1929, p.96).
Exodus 32:27: "Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his compassion, and every man his neighbor."

back to J Campbell, p 46
"Yet the hardness is balanced by an assurance that all that we see is but the reflex of a power that endures, untouched by the pain. thus the tales are both pitiless and terrorless -- suffused with the joy of a transcendent anonymity regarding itself in all of the self-centered, battling egos that are born and die in time."

Clown Quotes

2005-09-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

research material into Evil Clowns in mythology

"A Clown figure working in continuous opposition to the well-wishing creator very often appears in myth and folk tale, as accounting for the ills and difficulties of existence this side of the veil."

Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, Princeton University Press 1949, p292

"Behind this foolishness, it is possible to see that the one cause yields within th eframe of the world dual effects -- good and evil. The story is not as naive as it appears."

Ibid, p293

"Universal too is the casting of the antagonist, the representative of evil, in the role of the clown. Devils - both the lust thickheads and the sharp, clever deceivers - are always clowns. Though they may triumph in the world of space and time, both they and their work simply disappear when the perspective shifts to the transcendental. They are the mistakers of shadow for substance: they symbolize the inevitable imperfections of the realm of shadow, and so long as we remain this side the veil cannot be done away."

Ibid, p. 294

"Breaking free from cosmogonic associations, the negative, clown-devil aspect of the demiurgic power has become a great favorite in the tales told for amusement. A vivid example is Coyote of the American plains. Reynard the Fox is a European incarnation of this figure."

Ibid, p. 294 footnote: "Harva, op.cit.,pp. 114-115, quoting W. Radloff "Proben der Volkslitertur de turkischen Stamme Sud-Siberiens (St. Petersburg, 1866-70), Vol. I, p. 285