Stephen did an interesting job on the gas mask picture, but all of that subtlety and nuance disappeared when we posted it on Blogger, due to the forced shrinking of the image.

Well, that’s dumb. Here’s a bigger version that you can actually see.

I would love someone to divorce the jazz track from the vocal track, and write new music for these poems, something similarly dark, similarly relaxed and morbid; like Portishead, maybe, or Blackalicious, or Cibo Matto.

There’s a lot of beautiful writing out there in the world. For example, this, from NoBuggy.com:

The most well known of the U.S. black widows is the southern widow, Latrodectus Mactans, whose latin name translates “murderous biting robber”.

You might be asking yourself why I’m looking at information about terrible spiders; as it turns out I’ve had a couple of tanglings with hobo spiders, but figuring out that that’s what they were has taken me into dusty, cobwebby areas of both my house and the realm of human knowledge that I would have been more comfortable avoiding. Though — and I admit not being immune to the lure of this — the part of me that likes goth people and enjoys a good haunted house is entranced by the cobwebs these mendicant spiders leave in the nooks and crannies of my kitchen. When the fridge compressor kicks on, all the webs wave back and forth, back and forth, like both garden gates and seaweed. Eyes peep forth from the shadowed interior, ancient, arachnid, and mild. When I’ve been drinking, or haven’t been sleeping well, it seems that I could almost trace the blasphemies of the gods in those heavy funnels; Arachne, transformed and suicided, but angry still, ever the reformer.

Oh my goodness my hard drive has died again. I’ve replaced it once already — less than two months ago! — and it looks like I’ll be replacing it again. Apple, you baffle me.

So there’s no sketch today, or tomorrow, either, though they’ll be up as soon as I get the hardware replaced. Thankfully everything important’s backed up.

In the meantime, enjoy this note that I found in our breakroom, being held down by a bar of soap:

Holy moly we got us a germ fighter, here.
You can bet your bottom dollar this bacteria
fighter that comes in this little bar of soap
is next to a miracle. In order to keep germs
from multiplying you got to fight it with a
vengence, because if you don’t and it gets
the upper hand, lord, god we’ll have a
problem. When people buy my soap I watch them
walk away and I think to myself, there goes a
person that really cares.

“MY SECRET POTION”
?

There’s a signature:

Enjoy my secret
potion loves
the young and

All spelling and grammar has been left as it was, but I’ve normalized the capitalization, since the note was written in a mix of block letters and printing that would mAkE thIS nOtE looK LikE tOrGo had written it.

I can’t tell you how finding this has made my day. It’s like a gift! It is a gift!

I don’t know what the etiquette is on this, but I’d like to thank Brendan for linking to me, and Charlie Place and Luis Abbadie for their letters.

(It’s worth noting, for the record, that everything I write is fiction. There’s bits and pieces of real stuff all over the place, but none of these are intended to be strictly factual, and should not, for example, cause you to spend many many hours looking for a rare book or piece of occult lore. If you’re wondering what’s real and what isn’t — just drop me a line at quintusflaccus AT gmail DOT com and I’ll tell you what I know and what I’ve just made up!)

Also thank you to everyone who has incorporated the Fabian Society into what they do. 8763 Wonderland, Sh*t Storm, House of the D., Errewail, Ty’s Blog Placeholder, and Cosmophilia, you guys are great.

Also also a very special tip o’ the pin to Sleeping Leveret, who was flattering enough to cite the Fabian Society as an inspiration. He appears to be sleeping very soundly these days, sadly, but I keep hopin’.

I think that’s everyone. If you like any of this stuff, um, could you tell people about me? I’m a bashful kind of a dude and I’m broke but I admit I’m not immune to the lure of more readers. If you send someone an email and send me a copy I’ll pull a 200 word story out of it, just for you. If you want me to. You don’t have to!