State of the Apocalypse, Six-Seventeen-Thirteen Edition

On Tuesday 11 June, the worst wildfire in Colorado’s history ignited four or five miles north of me as the flaming ember flies. Fortunately for me and mine in the unfashionable south end of Briargate in north Colorado Springs, the wind was coming out of the south and those burning embers went deeper into Black Forest. And so a relatively small but dense forest (yes, it’s an actual forest) of spindly ponderosa pine, where the trees and their highly combustible duff are allowed right up to the doors of mega-million dollar mansions, went up in flames.

Over here in the crumbling split-levels near the intersection of Rangewood Drive and Briargate Boulevard we had to close our windows and listen to the bubble-headed bleach-blonde on Channel 13 tell us to turn on air conditioners most of us don’t have. The air was smoky, our nasal passages burned, and for a tense 48 hours it seemed like nothing was stopping this thing. I enjoyed my own half-hour of blood-freezing terror when the pre-evacuation was imposed on the area southwest of the fire—and mere miles to the northwest of me. A simple shift of the wind would have changed our lives forever, and you can bet no one would be broadcasting our sob story. No one cares if you’re losing everything you have when you don’t have much to begin with.

Scenes from a Zombie Abortion XVI: The CONFEDERATION Project

This is one of those rare cases in which one’s nostalgia for something isn’t killed off by a chance encounter with it years later. That is to say, I’ve always remembered this chapter  fondly, and damned if it didn’t reward my love when I read it again just today. Preacher Miller isn’t a cartoon villain; the overcooked and overexposed trope of the Evil Preacherman doesn’t apply. Here, we come to understand his drive, we feel his indignation — which means we’ll be there to weep when it all goes to shit, as we know it must. 

So help me, I am going to find a way to lash all this together and finish this once I’m done relating The Saga of the Dead Silencer. This is just too good to throw away. Run the boilerplate!

In 2008 James Robert Smith and I collaborated on a project we hoped would turn out to be the Winesburg, Ohio of zombie epics, a mosaic tale describing the communities coming together (and squaring off against one another) in the wake of the zombie apocalypse. For various reasons the collaboration fell apart. Bob took his part of the narrative — which included his idea of a border collie manipulating the other abandoned dogs and zombies—and crafted The Living End. I scuffled around for a couple of more years until I came up with The Saga of the Dead Silencer.

For those readers following the first part of my saga, Bleeding Kansas, who miss having something nasty-mean to read, here’s the sixteenth installment I wrote for the project. Of course, if you like this, feel free to pick up Bob’s completed work. Support your local architects of the apocalypse!

PREACHER MILLER

A ridge-runnin’ cracker, she said, that’s all those people think when they look at you.

Well, thought Preacher Miller, ain’t that what I’m doin’?

They think you get everything handed to you just ‘cause you’re white. You ever notice how it’s perfectly okay to make fun of poor white people? We’re all stupid an’ makin’ naked with family members if not the cow (like we can afford livestock!) an’ people laugh and laugh! It don’t matter how much schoolin’ you get or how pretty you learn to talk, everybody white and black looks down on a ridge-runnin’ cracker!

But Leah Miller’s boy had been determined to rise above all that. Faith in the Living God and in His Only Son, Jesus Christ, had enabled him to work and raise the money for seminary school. And what did you know, most of the people at seminary school recognized his faith for what it was, a genuine thing! They were all brothers in Christ, and it didn’t matter who you were or where you were from or the color of your skin (though admittedly there weren’t a lot of black folk there at the place he went to, all of one, really, but he was a good guy).

Happy Father's Day, Uncle Harlan!

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are rather awkward — that is, for the kind of people who feel awkward when I say the only things these days do for me is remind me of how grateful I am that I don’t have those pathetically weak and stupid people in my life anymore. [Pause to savor the shocked silence. And to those righteous twits who say, “We just don’’t SAY things like that!” well, I do. Just not often, and for obvious reasons.] 

So it’s a delightful surprise on this Father’s Day that I come across a recent interview with one of my spiritual fathers, one of the two “uncles” who helped shape my worldview, my attitude, who provided an encouraging voice when I was disgusted with being the only person who thought and felt the way I did and wished I was stupid and happy like everyone else. Uncle Ray Bradbury is gone, but I still got my Uncle Harlan. Rock on, you ornery old bastard. 

Yeah, yeah, I know. He’s always bragging about stuff he says is gonna happen and doesn’t, he flaked out on The Last Dangerous Visions, he touched a woman’s titty in front of a bunch of people at a World Science Fiction Convention, admitted it, now denies it. He’s mean to people sometimes. Yeah, so? 

He was there for me in my hours of darkness. Harlan Ellison poured my first Strange Wine, told me Deathbird Stories, and taught me to roar like a proper Beast Who Shouted “Love!” at the Heart of the World. Harlan mentions 1988’s Angry Candy in the interview linked above but his Last Known Good was Stalking the Nightmare in 1982. Like my Uncle Ray, he’s kept chugging along long after his Special Formula mojo was exhausted. [Pause to imagine the same pale squawking nothings in a dither over Tittygate, who are all about “compassion” and cisnormative fat-acceptance anti-bullying kittens, saying, “You should kill yourself.”]

But the goods Uncle Harlan once delivered are still there. Their truths are still true, their delivery mechanism whirs as efficiently as ever 30, 40, even 50 years down the line. Maybe not as much in print as I’d like to see, but I’ve got my copies. I think it’s time to pay them a revisit. Happy Father’s Day, Uncle Harlan, for teaching me how to throw the ball, for how to rebuild the engine in a muscle car. It was another kind of ball and another kind of engine in another kind of car entirely but it was more than anyone else ever did for me, and for that I am forever grateful.

"And the LORD said, 'Get the fuck off my lawn!'"
"Really? It says that?"

Saturday Adventure Theater! Only THE RESILIENT Survive!

The following excerpt, a little further down the narrative from the first, has: 

a) a blow-job

b) recreational drug use

c) a Tasing 

d) a living room getting trashed in the course of mortal combat

e) gunfire

f) a spearing

g) a zombie awakening, and 

h) more violence and general bad attitude than most 4,300-word chapters you’ll read anywhere.

In sum, this one really does have it all! For all the kvetching I’ve done about the violent and disturbing scenes I’ve written for Bleeding Kansas I apparently blocked out all memory of this passage I wrote for The Resilient 17 months ago — a chapter so disturbing I’ve rewritten it multiple times, mainly so the reader won’t be turned off by my hero and what he has to do to survive among the remnants an already sick society gone feral and degenerate in the zombie apocalypse. For instance, as loathsome as Kim is, I knew it would not do to have...well, I’ve said too much already. Let’s cut to the blow job, shall we?

Steve Earle Takes Another Road

Earle’s been “Down the Road” and then some. He’s most famous for “Copperhead Road” from the album of the same name, but he’s also sung “Nowhere Road” and “Telephone Road.”

Now we come to “Jericho Road,” one of the many outstanding tracks from his excellent 2007 album Washington Square Serenade. With the chugging acoustic guitar and the wailing harmonica I like to think of the persona of the singer as an Evil Mirror Universe Bob Dylan, rocking a VanDyke beard and demanding your agonizer. In this song Earle achieves a thundering, shaming sermon of the type Bob Dylan tried pulling off on occasion throughout his career. But Dylan didn’t have Earle’s genuinely weary-angry growl. Earle even pulls off the metaphorical obliqueness that Dylan makes look easy.

All jibber-jabber aside, it’s a great song for a Monday. Dig it:



Video by Luis Vicente de Aguinaga, who runs a mean little music channel on YouTube.

Scenes from a Zombie Abortion XV: The CONFEDERATION Project

I have a fat prole girl named Krystal in Bleeding Kansas, but she’s much different in disposition from the one you’ll meet here, who spells her name “Krystle.” The hell of it is, I’d forgotten all about Krystle when I was writing Krystal. If the name came up it’s because a common one among that social strata. Krystals, Krystles, or even Chrystals don’t grow up in McMansionland, drive minivans, or play with iPhones. I do not know why this is so. Only that it is. 

This one here just might save the night for our NPR-listening yuppie lady and her two children. Run the boilerplate!

In 2008 James Robert Smith and I collaborated on a project we hoped would turn out to be the Winesburg, Ohio of zombie epics, a mosaic tale describing the communities coming together (and squaring off against one another) in the wake of the zombie apocalypse. For various reasons the collaboration fell apart. Bob took his part of the narrative — which included his idea of a border collie manipulating the other abandoned dogs and zombies — and crafted The Living End. I scuffled around for a couple of more years until I came up with The Saga of the Dead Silencer.

For the benefit of those readers who were following the first part of my saga, Bleeding Kansas, and miss having something nasty-mean to read, here’s the fifteenth installment I wrote for the project. Of course, if you like this, feel free to pick up Bob’s completed work. Support your local architects of the apocalypse!

KRYSTLE

A loud pop from the woods killed the lights before they reached the edge of the lawn. The pretty yuppie lady gasped. Not a peep from the children, though. Smart kids, thought Krystle. The squeaky wheels get the teeth; Krystle had seen that rule enforced more than once before coming to New Bethany.

Blind, her night-shocked eyes useless, Kystle cut to the left. She regretted testing these kids’ smarts one more time, not least because mom was the obvious weak link and might call out. With their feet pounding the earth, their fear-sweat scenting the air, they were already broadcasting their presence loud and clear to anything and everything out here tonight. Krystle could only hope the children would follow, and that mom would save her questions and comments for another hour.

Sunday Back Porch Apocalypse Guitar Singalong!

“Cactus” is the miracle track from David Bowie’s 2002 Heathen album, the standout that isn’t some depressing miscegenation of lounge and disco as he’s been doing since 1982. It’s even more of a miracle when you consider that the song is a cover of one of the most overrated of music magazine darlings, The Pixies. What sounds creepy and weak in the original is transformed into the roar of an alpha wolf by Bowie’s confident delivery over a thundering arrangement. 

“Cactus” proves that Bowie, as of 2002, could still rock out if he had the material to do it with. That he can’t write it himself anymore can’t be held against him when he’s bringing it home like this.



For more bitchin’ about Bowie, see also: Talking Real Life Walking Dead Blues on a Resurrection Sunday.

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