Welcome Home (pt1)

A low steady rumble pervaded the place in a deep russet register that I at first took to be the sound of the blood rushing through my ears.

At some point I came to notice tiny daggers of dusty gravel pressing sharply against my back, and gradually I began to take sense of a million other tiny things in my surroundings: the searing heat, the individual rough-edged burrs of sand grains that bored into the flesh in the back of my arms, and the thick, humid air from which my weak and shallow lungs struggled to wring oxygen.

Even after convincing myself that I really was still alive, it took what seemed like another five minutes to finally coax my eyelids open and take a real measure of the place.  They felt as if they'd been sealed shut by some gruesome paste of dried blood and mucous, and they only gave way when I clawed the goo away with the hard edge of my filth-encrusted fingernails.  Slowly I brushed away the last irritating granules of dirt from my lashes and waited patiently while a cool, soothing bath of tears washed over my burning sclera.  Finally the trhobbing of my temples subsided, and my eyes darted about for clues.

I was apparently in the shadowy corner of a small, rough chamber hewn from the living rock, separated from the rest of the room by a small stoney ridge approximately one meter high.  I could perceive a strange irridescent red light burning from over the limens of that ridge from my supine position.   Not sure what to make of this odd circumstance, or the fact that the low droning rumble around me had not subsided but instead seemed to have quickened slightly and passed perhaps a meter or two behind me, I waited what felt like another five minutes before summoning the courage to roll onto my chest.

As I did so I heard a great dull crash, like the sound of hollow splintering wood or bone.  Stopping immediately I held my breath, silently inventorying my person for any trauma and tried to identify the source or at least the location of the person or thing making this noise.  I was okay, but no dice on reading that sound.  It had been too sudden and I had still been too disoriented to take any reliable notes.  There was no sign that whatever or whoever made that dreadful noise had passed, but I couldn't hold my breath forever, and that began to weigh upon me.  At some point I decided that my lungs held less than another minute's worth of breath in them, and I started to silently count to myself.

". . . Fifty-one one-thousand , fifty-two-one thousand, fifty-three-one thousand . . . ".  Suddenly I was startled by the sound of what seemed the sandy grinding of heavy feet pivoting and tramping away into the distance.  I couldn't help myself and gasped for breath just as I heard what I imagined to be the violent slam of a thick, rusty door about four meters ahead of me about four meters ahead of me.

I had no idea where I was, who or what was here with me or whether my current efforts at movement had been noticed.  I simply froze myself into place, struggling to take as low, light, and shallow gasps of air as possible while I tried to make a more complete auditory survey of my surroundings and bracing myself against some type of assault.  But none came, and slowly I noticed that the low continual rumbling that surrounded me since I woke now appeared  distant and muted, barely perceptible.  I decided that most likely what or whoever had been here earlier was gone and that I was alone in a closed room; or if I was not alone, I had at least I was consciously being allowed the opportunity to recollect myself and arise.  More likely I was alone.

I crawled up on my haunches and leaned againt the rough stone parition, glaring over its edge into the wild scarlet room before me.  I was alone.  At least now I was.  A set of course swirling tracks lay in the dark sand floor below, extending from a stoud iron-cladded door about four meters away to the centre of the chamber.  But they seemed to give little indication of the way of their making or who or how many or what size of person or thing may have made them.  I fruitlessly traced and retraced the path of these tracks with my eyes trying to imagine how and when they had been made when I noticed a pendulous dark object intruding on the upper periphery of my vision--a hanging stalagtite about  half a meter in front of me. 

Wherever the hell I was or whatever the hell was going on, one thing was clear:  That "recommended dosage" language was a bunch of bull.  There is no "recommended" anything when it comes to Ibogaine.

For Sale or Rent

Spacious buildings, located in smart north western Athens suburb and convenient to downtown bus and Metro stations as well as local schools and shopping.  Fashionable 250 metre-afzelia wood driveway with sporty Calatrava-designed retractable rooves.  Three olympic-sized swimming pools, one indoors. Comfortably furnished with over 30,000 personal seating units.   Asking price:  9 billion Euro or best offer.


See, Chicagoland?  Sometimes success is its own punishment . . . .

www.geostadia.blogspot.com/2010/03/greek-tragedy-of-olympic-proportions.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1036373/Abandoned-derelict-covered-graffiti-rubbish-What-left-Athens-9billion-Olympic-glory.html

www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/will-greece-be-an-olympic-winner.aspx

www.oaka.com.gr/article_detail.asp?e_cat_serial=001003001001&3_cat__id=132&e_article_id=142

Zombie Love

Ah-hemm . . . Well . . . [scratching nape of neck diffidently] . . . Well I suppose I do have some egg on my face!

Seems that "New Moon" movie far outpaced my most generous allowance for it--over $707 million gross!

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=newmoon.htm

To be quite honest, I kind of poo-poo'd the whole thing. In fact, I literally and outloud said that the producers themselves had poo-poo'd the whole thing out their cloacae. I really just could not grasp the appeal of it.

For starters, that whole "Ed-ward" thing seemed misguided from the get-go. How much response could a heterosexual woman actually expect from a dead man who insists on being called "Ed-ward"? And the face of the fellah they got to play him . . . Well, it sort of defies convential theories about the primacy of symmetry in the aesthetic experience. The promo photographs made him look like the doctor had delivered him with a corkscrew instead of a forceps.

But I was wrong. Nothing can be more plain to me now. Quite apart from the simple cash giving out from the thing, you'd be truly staggered by the sincere devotion of its legions of fans. "New Moon" websites, DVDs, magazine articles, fan fiction, beer coasters, the whole thing is simply OFF THE HOOK.

http://www.newmoonmovie.org/

Needless to say, as a man regarded as a media savvy-insider with a fair amount of skin in the game himself, this was cause for serious reflection. I really had to get a grip on the whole thing or get ready to face the reaper and throw in the towel alltogether. And after months of reflection and reading and re-reading popular media theory, I think I may finally have a response: Zombie Love.

Really, when you think about it, it's obvious. There could hardly be any other answer. The people have spoken clearly, and what the zeitgeist (pardon the pun) wants is to Romance the Revenants. It fits in perfectly with the historical trajectory of the interesection of economics and entertainment in our culture. When was the heyday of the classics of the horror genre? The 1930's and 1940's--the Great Depression, son! What was the subtext of the ur-mythos created by those films, the Draculas, the Wolfmen, the Frankensteins? That our shattered self-control and total submission to poorly understood and possibly monsterously inhuman forces within us is not only inevitable, not only understandable, but maybe even beautiful. Find the concept of being laid off humiliating? You won't if you can see the romantic appeal of a rabid fanged and clawed man/animal. Feel your human worth devalued by some silk suit-wearing corporate shill in Washington trying to deny you health care? Not likely if you can delight yourself with erotic phantasies of being fondled by a 400-year old corpse.

It's all so clear now, how did I not see it earlier? But it's not too late to make some dough out of all this. The news is still full of teabaggers and the like, modern-day angry villagers ready to storm the castles of their misapprehensions and let 'em burn, baby, burn! I have a meeting next week with some folks over at Summit to pitch a zombie romance thing. Yeah, I still have some details to hammer out yet, but that's not what these pitch sessions are about. They're all about the Big Picture, the Vision thing. I can see it all now, Angelina Jolie starring opposite Mitch McConnell. . . . But we'd better get some ice on him quick. The high heat of a Washington summer sure can do a job on a stack of stagnant braunschweiger.