Do you believe in mermaids?

'A Mermaid' by John William Waterhouse
(1849–1917), oil on canvas

Do you believe in mermaids?
in werewolves dark and furry?
in banshees, beasties, pointy pixies,
ghosts who go all blurry?

Do you believe in unicorns?
in vampires tall and smiling?
in witches, wizards, druids’ blizzards,
wood-nymphs so beguiling?

Are you in fact an alien?
a monster green and pimply?
a freak, a fright, a barrow-wight,
a corpse whose limbs lie limply?

If so then go to meet your friends
across the cold black river
perhaps they’ll kiss your bloodless lips
or ...

CONTINUES in ... AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Vot could be Verse?) for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.

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eBooks by Cosmic Rapture
(for kindle, tablet, smartphone or e-reader.)

NIGHTMERRIES: THE LIGHTER SIDE OF DARKNESS. This so-called "book" will chew you up, spit you out, and leave you twitching and frothing on the carpet. More than 60 dark and feculent fictions (read ‘em and weep) copiously and grotesquely illustrated.

AWAREWOLF & OTHER CRHYMES AGAINST HUMANITY (Vot could be Verse?). We all hate poetry, right? But we might make an exception for this sick and twisted stuff. This devil's banquet of adults-only offal features more than 50 satanic sonnets, vitriolic verses and odious odes.

MANIC MEMES & OTHER MINDSPACE INVADERS. A disturbing repository of quirky quotes, sayings, proverbs, maxims, ponderances, adages and aphorisms. This menagerie holds no fewer than 184 memes from eight meme-species perfectly adapted to their respective environments.

MASTRESS & OTHER TWISTED TAILS. An unholy corpus of oddities, strangelings, bizarritudes and peculiaritisms, including but not limited to barbaric episodes of herring-flinging and kipper-kissing. A cacklingly bizarre read that may induce fatal hysteria. Not Recommended!

FIENDS & FREAKS and serpents, dragons, devils, lobsters, anguished spirits, hungry ghosts, hell-beings, zombies, organ-grinders, anti-gods, gods and other horse-thieves you wouldn't want to meet in a dark cosmos. Immature Content! Adults Maybe.

HAGS TO HAGGIS. An obnoxious folio featuring a puke of whiskey-soaked war-nags, witches, maniacs, manticores and escapegoats. Not to mention (please don't!) debottlenecking and desilofication, illustrated. Take your brain for a walk on the wild side. Leave your guts behind.

The Sound of One Hand Slapping

The Seeker asks the Mastress: “How may this humble supplicant who kneeleth before thee become enlightened? How doth One enjoin with the All, or is it predestinated forevermore to tread the cyclic wheel of existence, hamster-like, until the wrathful deities take pity on the crusading pilgrim's benighted soul?”

The Mastress — a nut-brown, gnarled and ancient guru of indeterminate gender and reproachable demeanour — respondeth imperturbably saying, “Ask the next six people you meet; perhaps you may find the answers you say you seek.”

“What the fricking flaming biscuit!” exclaimeth the Seeker, on hearing these mysterious words.

Loincloth wafting on a stealthy breeze, the Nut-brown maketh the smile of one lip curling. The visage of the guru wears a veil of inscrutability as profound as the deepest depths of inner space.

Dissatisfied and disgruntled, the Seeker taketh his leave of the Gnarly One and sets his footlings on the path that leadeth to the Inn of the Flowering Beetle, formerly The Queen’s Moustache. On the way he encountereth the first of six respondents — an aged washerwoman squatting phlegmatically in the shade of a cinnabar tree.

“How do you do, O Gentle Crone?” enquireth the Seeker courteously.

“Get lost asshole!” quoth the Crone, waxing wrathful, “or I’ll box thy poxy earhole in the blink of a newt’s eyelid!”

Brothers dreaming

This story is loosely based on reality. At the age of about nine, during a strange and memorable dream I called out to my brother to come and join me. One of my biggest regrets is that subsequently I never got around to asking him about that night. Nor will I, at least not in this life — he died three years ago, at the age of 58.

Oh and one more thing: please ignore the title "Nanofauna" on the music video (it's a long story). "Portal to Forever" is a much better title. You might want to crank up the bass.

Once upon a night, a nine-year-old boy named Cain dreamed he was soaring like an eagle in the skies above a land so beautiful that he wept with joy.

He felt so full of wonder and delight that he called out to his younger brother Abel, asleep in the bunk below. Cain wanted Abel at his side, flying through the air of that mysterious land. Cain knew in his heart it would be a long time and a far way before he’d see those colours or hear that music again.

The next morning Cain felt off-balance. He was happy and excited, as if he had discovered a great secret that would change everything. But he was also angry and resentful that he had to get up and go to school. He wished he could just go back to sleep and resume the magic dream.

Abel woke up that morning feeling hot and dizzy. Their mother, Eve, took one look at his pale sweaty face and said “no school for you today sweetie, you must be coming down with something.”

Then Cain said “he’s faking, it’s not fair…” and Abel said “am not!” and Cain said “liar liar your pants are on fire!” and Abel said “well your pants smell like poo!” at which point Cain flew at his brother in a rage, throwing punches as hard and fast as he could.

Miscarriage of justice

The coppery smell of blood hung in the air within the narrow, blighted birth-chamber. "Not salvageable," was my father's judgment carelessly declared over the dying body of his youngest wife---thirty years his junior---on the occasion of my emergence into this world of pain. The next time we met was the day he died.

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Le Club Nosferatu

It was 3:00 am and they were hungry. Where could they go in the City to feed? There were hardly any people about and all the restaurants and take-away joints were closed. So after some debate they decided to go clubbing instead.

When they got there the music was pounding loud enough to burst the eardrums of a beggar sleeping in the alley out back. He clutched his skull and wailed piteously. The blood ran down his cheeks.

"Well that's handy," said Armand, "we can have a quick snack before we go in!"

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A Renormalised Cat

Schrodinger's cat. My thanks to the creator of this image. Apologies for lack of attribution but I can't remember where I got this image from.

Whereby the Akashic Record is less record than portfolio or ensemble of multi-dimensional spacetimeslices, all but one of which are potential; and the one which is not potential is brought into actuality by virtue of the actualising agent, of the Copenhagen, Everrettian or multiversal School, constructed on the premise that the Observer brings reality into being by decoherently collapsing the renormalised wave function (hopefully without killing Schrodinger's cat).

Here's what the cat is saying: "Being simultaneously dead and alive in the box gave me an incredible perspective on "life, the universe and everything" And I'm here to share that perspective with the world!"

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The Evil Sandwich

Once upon a brunch I bought a Sandwich from a gnarled and rustic seller ensconced quite gaily in a gaudy booth one inauspicious day.

‘Twas ham and cheese: I remember it well, as if ‘twere but this very toothsome morn itself that I reluctantly but expectantly forked over six clinking dollarim — sponduleks if you will — to that aged and curly purveyor within zir gaudy booth that foul and fractious day.

And though the absence of tomato hinted at the manifestation of dark forces as repulsive as a botched cosmological constant, still I remained initially at least unaware if not absent-minded as to the true and fundamental nature of the Sandwich.

Linden dollar exchange rate crisis

Second Life and the Linden dollar have faded into relative oblivion. The currency is no longer current, having been supplanted by Bitcoin and other virtual mediums of exchange. And these days Second Life itself is worse than inadequate, it's claustrophobic. Who would want to smear themselves across a paltry two lives, now that the technology exists to support dozens if not hundreds of lives per person?

But let's not dwell on the limitations of the past. Let's not get too smug about how far we've traveled in the last few years. To maintain our blistering pace of cultural change we've had to jettison some real good stuff that in future we will wish we hadn't.

But that's enough commentary; let's eat some meat (below).

Technique for managing anger

As a person who has carried a heavy burden of anger for most of his life, I have found the following three-stage technique for controlling anger effective and useful. The technique (thought, word, deed) is based on the yoga of visualisation and affirmation.

Stage 1, Thought. Take a long, slow, deep breath and while you are doing that visualise these words scrolling across a screen in front of your mind's eye:

Thank you XYZ* for helping me understand that there is no requirement for me to feel anger, and that if I wish I can extinguish my anger. I reach deep into myself. I gently and lovingly take hold of my red, boiling ball of anger, bitterness, resentment, frustration...

Visualise the hot, red, glowing ball of anger deep inside yourself. Inside the ball is your angry self, your mouth wide open, shouting, screaming in rage, fists beating furiously against the inside of the ball. Visualise your hands gently taking hold of the ball. Now start exhaling, long and slow, while you continue visualising the words and the images described by the words.)

The Shortest Sentence

What is the shortest (grammatically, semantically and syntactically) "proper" sentence in English ? I think it's "Be.", which is the same length as "Do." but comes before "Do." in alphabetical order of the initial letter. The sentence "I." lacks an object not to mention a verb, as do the exclamatories "O!", "Ah!", "Mm!", "La!" etc. So it would seem that "Be." is the winner, unless anyone can come up with another candidate?.

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See what you look at (Daemonide)

The video aims to suggest a process of self-examination, which inevitably leads to self-reflexive paradox.

Good for meditating to: Turn and look at yourself, as if turning a glove inside out. What you see is the Universe looking at you. The Eye sees the I. Me go, says Ego. But as the Tibetan Book of the Dead says, "Do not meditate, for there is nothing to meditate upon".

No, that's all rubbish. Don't believe a word of what I've just said.

The video is just about me indulging my habit for self-indulgent angst in multiple media.

The late great Robert A. Heinlein came up with the concept of “pantheistic multiple-ego solipsism”, which seems somehow to describe the painting: SEE WHAT YOU LOOK AT, oils on canvas, 46 x 35.5 cm, started in 2006 finalised in 2012. Audio composed by masterymistery: DAEMONIDE, featuring a range of midi instruments. Thanks to Antares for the Heinlein quote.

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