Randy | October 24, 2014
“‘Darkness’, as it inspires me, isn’t limited to expressions of evil, mayhem, and bad outcomes. Something can also be considered “dark” if it is unknown, misunderstood, or incorrectly interpreted.” ~ The Book of Dark Sentiments The Artistry of Ray Villafane (sample above) and his fellow Artists Andy Bergholtz and Chris Vierra who together form the creative […]
Randy | October 23, 2014
Student and disciple of Nature that I am, it hasn’t escaped my notice that the cycle of the seasons – from the long, slow build up of Spring, through the heat of Summer, into the breathless bounty of Autumn, and then on to the flatline of Winter – bears a striking resemblance to sex; or […]
Randy | October 22, 2014
The label above would have been included with one of the ornately turned out and beautifully boxed kits consisting of masterfully crafted weapons and accessories created for defense against, and if necessary the destruction of, vampires, that were popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Timing and anecdotal evidence suggest, although fall far […]
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 […]