Randy | October 21, 2014
Old Norse belief held that the skein of your life was woven long before your birth, and that the timing of your death was thus inevitable. Only the quality of it – how you conducted yourself in that final moment – would determine if you were worthy of an afterlife in Valhalla.
Randy | October 20, 2014
Back in the early 1980’s, a young man came to work for a company I was consulting for, and it fell to me to train him in the arcane arts of installing and troubleshooting security and fire alarm systems. I befriended him in a mentor kind of way, and learned he had spent much of […]
Randy | October 19, 2014
The world is at war. With everything. The world of humans strives for unbridled growth, and in so doing either sheds all care, or cooks up justifications for its extravagance, to the peril of everything that isn’t us. Religion is still being used as a reason to kill everyone else who doesn’t belong to “the […]
Randy | October 18, 2014
If there is one very dark pit modern society is hell bent on careening headlong into, it’s the dangerous, dangerous, and I emphasize really fucking dangerous idea that demanding privacy is somehow suspicious, and tantamount to an open admission that you – indeed anyone who wishes to have it – must have “something to hide”. […]
Randy | October 17, 2014
Murder by poison has a long dark history. For example, whether historically accurate or cooked up by rivals, the Borgia family name is indelibly stained with it. Poison is less used today for killing things that walk on two legs for reasons well presented by Esther Inglis-Arkell in her article The Deadliest Poisons in History […]
Randy | October 16, 2014
Today’s Dark Sentiment is about things that some people permit to smell bad but shouldn’t, for there have been times and places in history, including very recent history if you get around much, when the olfactory senses have found themselves in need of assistance that has to be nothing short of supernatural. The poem that […]
Randy | October 15, 2014
Tessa’s miniscule sculptures reinvigorate a belief in fairies: not the sweet Tinkerbell image in popular conscience, but a biological, entomological, macabre species translating pastoral fable into nightmarish lore. Constructed from bits of organic material, such as roots, leaves, and dead insects, each of Tessa’s figures stand barely 1 cm tall, their painstakingly intricate detail visible […]
Randy | October 14, 2014
The macabre has long held uneasy sway over the human condition. From ghost stories to creation myths, from CSI to Shakespeare, from cable news voyeurism to Edgar Allan Poe, subjects of death, murder and all things ghastly have fascinated and frightened for centuries. Songs are no exception. From Old World roots to more recent incarnations […]
Randy | October 13, 2014
The study of any Martial Way that may lend itself to the harming or killing of another human being both broadens one’s horizons and limits options. I speak of limitations because if you are known to be skilled in empty hand techniques, a blade, or with firearms for example, you will be immediately suspected if […]
Randy | October 12, 2014
Fun With the Great Unwashed By LFM There’s a thing I like to do, Each seven years or so. I spread a rumour that I’ve died Through towns I rarely go. Then off about my business For at least another year, Watching people stop and stare, Then cross themselves in fear. Most fun of all […]