Category: lost time incident

lost time incident 45
Spent a long weekend doing very little. There was a tiny part of me that thought that I should undertake the next big writing project with all this free time, but it lost out to the part of me that said “What’s the absolute least amount of anything I can do on the day after Thanksgiving?” Answer: It’s very little. Very little. Today may follow the same pattern, besides putting this thing together.

 

twittermashups
Making the rounds on Twitter this week is a website that allows you to name two Twitter accounts, and it’ll then look for structural similarities in tweets and try to mash them together. Most times, the grammar is broken or the result is nonsense, but sometimes it works. Which is how I got to stand (briefly) on the same ground as America’s greatest oddball erotica writer, Chuck Tingle.

Or reclusive and missing-from-Twitter weirdo @utilitylimb:

I still write original tweets, though. It’s not all Dr. Moreau-style grafting around here (he writes while his monstrous tweets drag him onto a funeral pyre).

 

a list of things that could be martial arts moves or a weird description of a circus disaster
Flaming Breath Tornado
Elephants Smash the Peanut
Three Ring Circus Fire Flower
10 Clowns Punch
No Refunds Monk’s Palm

 

18 wheels of terror
Terry “The 19th Wheel” Wheeler steered his 18-wheeler truck down the great American highway, Miles Davis playing on his 8-track player. “It’s the notes he doesn’t play,” he said to himself, echoing something he had heard somewhere about why Miles Davis was important.

But what he didn’t realize was that at the last truck stop he visited, while he was inside using the showers and buying a new tire thumper, plus stocking up on jerky, his truck had been visited and seduced by a LOT VAMPIRE!

These supernatural denizens of the highways and byways, the asphalt rivers that flow hither and yon in this great nation, were once men and women like you and me. Well… like you.

They had jobs, they had families. But one day, something happened to them. Something… evil.

I couldn’t tell you what it was. They don’t like to talk about it. Secretive types, these lot vampires. Someone should do a study.

But once that evil thing happens to them… hoo boy. There you go. You got lot vampires. They haunt parking lots at truck stops and, when no one is looking, they use their hypnotic gazes to approach the average 18 wheeler and lure it to its doom. Then the lot vampires bite ’em. Right on the bumper.

It’s gotta taste gross. But that’s evil for ya. Evil don’t give a DAMN about being gross.

And one of these lot vampires had bit Terry’s truck. Now he’s inside this truck, and doesn’t even know it’s going evil. UNTIL NOW!

The Miles Davis 8-track warbled a bit and was then replaced with a spooky voice! It said “Terry! This is your truck speaking! I am now… a truck vampire!”

“Dang!” said Terry. “Double dang!” Every trucker knows the dangers of truck vampires.

1. Truck vampires don’t like crossing running water, which limits your delivery options.
2. You can’t deliver garlic for independent farmers anymore.
3. Truck vampires run on blood, not gasoline.

“Are you sure you’re a dang vampire?” asked Terry.

“Yup,” said the voice from the 8-track. “Gimme blood.”

“I guess there’s just one thing to do,” said Terry.

If you think that Terry drives to the hospital to get enough donated blood that he can complete his current delivery, then will drive to a church and get a priest can exorcise the vampirism (because Terry confuses possession with vampirism, like, all the time), turn to page 17.

If you think that Terry is the sort of guy who would rig up a jagged people-murdering scoop on the front of his rig, and set up a series of tubes and hoses to feed the blood from run-over pedestrians directly into the fuel tank, the end result being a blood-soaked cross country murder tour, turn to page 28.

 

ending theme song
Doot do doo do doot-doot. Zap ah dah dap dee-deet. We made it, we made it. Let me know which page you turned to. The power is in your hands.

—Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 44
This is a celebratory week. I’ve managed to publish something for the first time since the release of THE SPIRIT LEFT ME, which was over 2 years ago now. (Yeesh.) Some of the credit has to go to this “lost time incident” project. It’s got me setting aside weekend time for creative pursuits that had previously been going to idle entertainment.

There’s hours and hours of time left in FALLOUT 4, waiting for me to finish saving the radioactive wasteland from… uh… someone. Now that I haven’t played for a while, the plot’s slipping away. Good rule of thumb, though, is anyone shooting at me is an enemy. Don’t worry about my wasteland persona. She’ll be fine, whenever I get back to her.

The election has left a stick in my spokes, though, creatively speaking. My Twitter account has just been political retweets. The shift to self-promotion is a welcome change of pace.

 

a shift to self-promotion
I wrote a short work of fiction for Horrible Vacuum Industries and it just came out this week. Horrible Vacuum, as publishers, are dedicated to putting out “word-movies.” It’s an invented term that essentially means fiction with a catchy high concept, a pun-based title (ideally), and then written with an amateurish charm. Characters have stupid names, the writing is clunky, metaphors collapse under their own weight and conversations go nowhere. It’s as close to a b-movie as you can get in text form.

Honestly, I wanted to work with them just to see them design a cover for me, because all their ebooks have covers designed to look like VHS movie covers, complete with genre names in a tiny circle. All works are released under a pseudonym as well, should their authors ever need to distance ourselves from our dumb stories.

On the off chance you somehow missed it on social media, my ebook is called SWAP MEAT, written as George G.G. George. For only 99 cents, you can read one of the oddest things I’ve ever written. It’s about a small town swap meet that serves as a cover for some murderous cannibals.

(Those are worst kind of cannibals. The kind that don’t murder, but still eat human flesh, are a distant second. Cannibals who’ve never actually eaten another person, but think about it a lot, are an even more distant third place.)

Anyway, if you’ve enjoyed the nonsense you’ve seen as subscribers to this newsletter, you should dig it.

 

thanksgiving
Jaffid the pilgrim kicked a rock into the middle of his barren field. “Aw, nuts. The Devil has cursed this rotten land. Nothing I’ve planted grows here. Not vetches, or rape. Not a sugar tree where I buried that Hallow’s Eve candy that I had told my children was taken by witches. Not a grove of sturdy young worker trees grown from where I buried my sugar-mad children, which in turn lead me to tell the remaining children that their siblings had been taken by witches. It’s eighteen kinds of awful. I wish I had never sought religious freedom.”

“Hey, what up,” shouted Tisquantum. “I couldn’t help but overhear that you were regretting ever coming here. Cool, cool, cool. You need help packing?”

“Please don’t talk to me,” said Jaffid. “I know that all you’re here to do is to slip the Devil’s words into my ears under the guise of friendship.”

“We’re not friends,” said Tisquantum. He squinted at the sinking sun. “Hey, uh… shouldn’t you have a harvest by now? Me and my boys have a harvest festival planned, so I came all the way over here to tell you how much better it’s gonna be than whatever you have planned.”

Jaffid sighed. “We don’t have a festival planned. Right now my plans are to either starve to death after snow starts falling, or go back to England.”

“Huh,” said Tisquantum. “I thought they hated you there.”

“They do. But there’s food.”

“Yeah. Hey, you keep mentioning this Devil who you say has a lot of power. Have you considered asking the Devil for help?”

Jaffid’s eyes narrowed. “Did he put you up to this? To asking? ARE YOU ONE OF HIS MINIONS?”

“Totally. You got it, good job. So hey, if you’re not doing anything, about mid-day tomorrow? Wanna stop by? We’re having corn cakes and stuff. Big feast. Bring the wife and unburied children. I’ll even tell you about farming. Why not.”

Jaffid took off his ridiculous buckled hat. “That sounds nice. Maybe we’ll be there.”

In an explosion of brimstone, the Devil appeared between the two men. “Hey, guys. I heard that there was no planned way to end this bit, so … uh… Happy Thanksgiving? The end? We’re done. Go read the next bit. Okay, thanks, I’ve been the Devil and you’ve been great.”

 

ending theme song
Well, well, well. A little glimpse into actual American history there. Like a window through time.

Can you believe there’s been 44 weeks of this goofery and nonsensification?

—Michael Van Vleet

 

The numbness and shock haven’t exactly worn off yet, but in between thinking about all the skills I lack to survive a proper end-of-empire tumble, I’ve been finding time to think about plenty of stuff. Like what Kurt Vonnegut said in an interview about the effect of artists against Vietnam:

“When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.”

A lot of experts and artists are feeling like dropped pie at the moment.

 

normally twitter nonsense goes here
On the day of the election, I was positive things were going to be great. I was relaxed. Whistling. Amusing myself by tweeting voting updates from a fantasy setting.

I don’t really want to revisit them at the moment.

 

some jokes
Q: Why do elephants paint their toenails red?
A: Within 100 years, climate instability could lead to open conflict over access to fresh water.

Q: Have you ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree?
A: Actual racists and fascists are about to take power and if anything, not enough alarm bells are going off.

Q: Why do elephants have baggy knees?
A: We’re in the middle of an enormous mass extinction.

Q: Why do alligators never hang out under cherry trees?
A: Because the elephants kept landing on them. Squashed ’em flat. They used to be much taller, as a species.

 

ending theme song
Maybe I should have taken this week off.

About the best I managed was I made a music mix. So you can check that out immediately after deleting this email.

—Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 42
Clouds moved in overnight and there was a little rain. I saw a bee visiting the tree right outside my front door. I’ve read that both of these things are endangered now. We don’t get much rain here anymore. Bees are struggling.

For now, I have coffee and music and light. I’m actively appreciating it.

Saw DOCTOR STRANGE yesterday, so I’m reconsidering my career options. Being a sorcerer looks like fun. Read lots of books, wave your hands around. The movie didn’t mention salaries, though, so there’s still some research to be done.

They gave us an hour back last night. We should do that more often. Hours are nice.

 

nonsense from twitter

Obviously, the election’s been front of mind this week. The world insists on delivering an actually terrifying election season, instead of one full of magic use, immortal candidates, and murderous monoliths made out of foodstuffs.

[My opponent claims that, if elected, she’ll trap our enemies in the Mountain of Mirrors. How can we trust her when her own arch-nemesis dwells beyond the stars and regular haunts our dreams with visions of birds that speak in blood and fire?]

[When my insect messengers arrive, allow them to collect your vote in their mandibles to bring them back to my Voting Hive. Every vote for me will be consumed and transformed into the honey this nation needs. We make the best, most corrosive honey.]

This election really needs to hurry up and be over with.

 

idioms
If I had a nickel for every nickel I had, I would soon be overwhelmed by the unending river of nickels I would keep getting. Where would I put them? I live in a second floor apartment! The floors can’t take the weight! I don’t want to be responsible for having so many nickels that their weight destroys the floor and murders my downstairs neighbors in a deluge of coins!

You can lead a horse to water. You can lead a horse into the water. You can tell your horse that it’s been a fish this whole time. Your horse doesn’t give a damn. Your horse knows that you’re full of bad ideas. It’s just waiting for you to leave. Then it’s gonna learn agriculture and it’s going to grow its own damn apples.

A bird in the hand is terrified. Is that worth something to you? Feeling its heart beating at a frantic pace, unsure what you’re going to do next? You’re telling the bird it’s been a fish this whole time. You’re just going to lead it to water. Why do you do this? This bird just wants you to let go. It doesn’t want to swim. Is its terror worth something to you?

There are other fish in the sea. Many of those fish weren’t fish before you lead them to water. You declared they were all fish. They did not believe you. What were you doing? Leave the water alone. Leave the animals alone. Is this because of the nickels? The trauma? Of seeing metal coins acting like water, flooding your home, destroying your life? And now everything must go back to the water? Is that what happened?

They were just nickels.

This is just water.

ending theme song
Wasn’t that something, folks? It was something. I don’t know what it was, but it was something. A bunch of words, all in a row.

That’s something, isn’t it?

—Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 41 
The sun is shining outdoors but it’s a trap. It was pouring so heavy out there a short while ago that a mermaid could’a been walking around on ‘er flippers just fine. Anyway.

The secret writing project that was keeping me busy is just about wrapped up. Handed in a second draft just yesterday. It was put together while I did my best impression of a writer: I was sitting at a dark table in a bar, being socially antisocial, sipping Scotch and typing away.

Didn’t care for it. Entirely too much sports involved, on the four visible TV screens.

The writing part was okay.

So with that done, today I had time to watch a movie. That’s a good time. You guys like movies?

 

nonsense from twitter

 

two-sentence scary things
A family moves into an old house where the previous occupants were murdered. The cable company tries to get them to pay the previous occupants’ outstanding balance!

A young boy pushes his sister into a well. She survives and climbs out and one day becomes a tax attorney!

A hiker, alone in the woods, is pursued and bitten by a mysterious beast! And it turns out to be someone who likes to bite people, then talk about politics!

For sale, baby shoes, never worn. The baby learned how to levitate and had telekinesis and threw people around and never needed shoes!

A person who looks just like you reads a dumb newsletter. AND THEN bEHIND THeM IS SOMETHING SCARY!

—

Okay, I have to stop there, because some of you are getting worked up. But no, I keep keep going and your heart can’t take it and explodes and sets fire to your home!

ending theme song
Well, that’s going to do it for us. Everyone else in this room with me is asleep at 7:30 p.m. Two cats and a wife. One of the cats is on my lap. On the TV: A fake landscape of a rural path, with rain sounds and Chinese-sounding flute. The rumbling of ersatz thunder.

Oops. It just got stuck in a thunder loop. Eight to ten quick thunders and then the video ended. Weird way to end that.

Weird way to end this.

—Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 40
The crows by the train station know me now. They know I’ve got peanuts in my pocket and all they have to do is get my attention on mornings when I’m not awake yet, stumbling along, a podcast in my ears. Swooping above me seems to work, or landing nearby.

Other than firming up those neighborhood relationships, I don’t know that much happened this last week.

This weekend did include some walking around. A bit of grocery shopping. Visited the Himalayan/Indian grocery and got some spices that might lead to making a chickpea dish in the near future… once I get some chickpeas.

But mostly I’ve been writing.

Last weekend, I finished the first draft of a secret writing project. My Monday morning was made as the folks I’m working with started giving plenty of positive feedback and great suggestions for improvement.

So this weekend, if I was on the couch, I was expanding, rewriting, clarifying. We’re working against a mid-November due date for the publication of the e-book so it shouldn’t be too long before I feel comfortable talking about any details.

It actually hit 7 p.m. here before I realized it was Sunday and I hadn’t done a single thing for this newsletter, so this is being thrown together as quickly as I can manage.

But something good is coming!

And I’m going to get right back to it as soon as this goes out.

Bonus photo of my occasional writing companion using one of my typing hands as a pillow:

twitter nonsense
I think about astronauts a lot. About how badly space messes you up, even when you’re in a high tech protective cocoon. Bone loss. Muscle tone. You have to be more aware of when you should have used the restroom, because much of the process whereby your body tells you “it’s time” requires gravity as a catalyst.

We are products of the gravity well we grew up in and space doesn’t like us much.

Do you know the TV show “Steven Universe”? It’s about a little kid whose mom was some kind of gem alien. She and her friends teamed up to protect the Earth, despite not being from here. Steven grows up dealing with his mom not being around and wanting to be involved in the dangerous work of his mom’s gem alien friends and, as a half-gem alien, it seems like at some point he’s going to be a great help to them.

Anyway, it had me wanting to see a story where the entire premise is flipped. I want to see a show about some humans on an alien world where they’ve decided they should protect the local population. They hang out with a weird half-human kid who one day is going to have their innate powers, like… what… what do humans do that would seem like superpowers?

I guess it depends on the aliens.

If they don’t use speech to communicate, then talking is like telepathy. “You mean you make those weird noises and the other humans know what you’re thinking? Or it can make them DO STUFF?”

Seems like fiction is full of outsiders who want to protect humans. Just thinking it would be interesting to see the opposite. The amazing humans who can walk, protecting an alien town full of sponges who are stuck to rocks.

Might just be me.

ending theme song
Sorry to keep things short, but India is coming online in just a few hours, and I have a daily check-in with a work colleague there. Pretty soon my weekend is going to come to an end. But I still have a final act that could use some padding, a surprise twist that needs to be inserted, and a fake PSA written warning kids about an activity that, to be honest, they shouldn’t much be interested in.

Back to work!

See you in a week!

—Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 39
Still working this rainy weekend on my top secret writing project. The weather’s been a great help, enabling me to not even feel remotely guilty about not stepping outside. Instead I can stay in front of a computer every waking moment, listening to music and occasionally adding a few sentences or paragraphs to the work in progress.

I did, however, put some stuff on Twitter this week, so we’ve got that. The election was a big creative driver. Obviously.

 

stuff from Twitter

 

playlist
While I’m doing all this writing, I’ve been exploring soundtracks that work for me. I’ve been finding that my current project goes well with vaporwave and retrosynth. With vaporwave, I have hints of the familiar, with R&B structures washed out and pitched down, so my brain has some rhythms it knows. And when I need energy, the retrosynth propulsive sound sets a good pace.

VA-31 – “A Night On the Town” – With this album, I can listen to Michael Jackson’s PYT slowed down over 15 minutes, the vocals pitched down a soul singer’s romantic baritone.

In Love With a Ghost – “let’s go” – Last night, when I ran out of steam, I went digging through Bandcamp’s tagging system, looking for subgenre names that sounded interesting, or checking geo tags. This is how I found myself wondering what was going on musically in Slovakia. Turns out someone there is running a cassette-tape label where they put out bedroom pop artists, which is how I found this little EP of domestic sound-sampling.

ending theme song
Anyway. That’s something. Gotta get back to that other waiting browser window that still needs more words in it.

—Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 38
Not much going on this week on the lost time incident front. This is because I have another writing engagement that’s taking up my time and attention this week. Considering that I started this weekly writing project as a placeholder until I had a writing project, I must be on the right track.

Anyway, here’s a few things from Twitter, featuring my Halloween pseudonym:

twitter stuff

 

retro retro retro
Since I don’t have much for you this week, maybe you could be entertained by some of the retro-80s music corners I’ve been spending time in.

FORÊT DE VIN – “Another Dimension (feat. SAY)”
It’s so hard to believe that this track is from two Swedish guys, produced this year, because if you told me it was on the soundtrack to, say, Mannequin 2, I would have believed you. It’s a perfect recreation of the 80s synthpop sound. And not necessarily the cool stuff that everyone wants to pretend they were listening to in the 80s.

New Retro Wave
And here’s a label that’s doing its level best to bring back the synth musical landscapes that used to accompany movies about kids who find alien best friends, or rollerblade across the desert looking for water, or other films found in VHS clamshells.

Division – “Lost in Time”
The artist who records as Division was one I first knew under their Timecop1983 identity— and to date, that’s one of my favorite band names, as far as names-as-mission-statements go. They’re based in the Netherlands, so maybe northern Europe is where decades go to retire.

 

ending theme song
Anyway, I’ll be back on here when I’m out from under my other writing project. Even though I’m not doing original fiction for here, do you guys still want a weekly check-in with Twitter nonsense and notes about books/music/films/etc.?

Otherwise, I’m happy to go quiet for a while. Let me know, or leave feedback in the Facebook page.

lost time incident 37
Halloween is just around the corner so this week we have a spooky story about responsible parenting. If you are pregnant, or prone to seizures, or are “spook-averse”, please consider coming back next week, unless you have consulted your doctor and asked your doctor to subscribe to this newsletter as well. (We don’t have much representation in the medical field in our subscriber base and this is the perfect chance to address it.)

For the rest of you: Are you ready? Braced?

Okay, let’s go!

 

100 children
Their parents were part of the quiverfull movement, which meant they made a full time job out of making babies, plus there were some adoptions, and honestly some of them might be kids from the neighborhood or from the hobo camp down by the river. But the last time anyone counted, there were about 100 of them.

And when the parents went missing, they had to go somewhere.

Rumors of where the parents went, ranked by popularity among the children:

• Got locked inside tanning beds, turned into human jerky, bodies hidden by the salon owners who are also now missing
• Now living somewhere in Europe, starting their second 100 child family in a country with a social safety net
• Car accident, probably
• Bringing 100 souls into the world (directly or indirectly) was a task set upon them by a malevolent spirit and now their curse is lifted and they’re in Heaven
• They’re still around, but they walk on their knees and wear kids clothes and have blended in with the 100 children, always standing in the back, keeping quiet
• Mexico

Luckily, they had a rich uncle they knew as Uncle Earwort. Unbeknownst to him, he was listed as next of kin and on October 1st, all 100 children dismounted county buses that had transported them and their worldly possessions to his clifftop mansion. Three of the children were lost somewhere in the garden maze on the way to the front door. Eight of them remembered, rather abruptly, that they were old enough to manage their own finances, and they left to find an apartment to rent on their own.

A social worker knocked on Earwort’s front door, on behalf of the remaining 89 children. After a clipboard exchange, some signing and initialling, the social worker re-entered the garden maze and probably made it home. Who can say.

The 89 children explored the mansion, claiming rooms and cupboards, corners and cabinets for their new sleeping space. Four of them found the secret second basement beneath the first basement, but unfortunately it was never completed and was without an exit.

After a family meeting and a speech about the importance of education, 23 children were told to pack up again as they were off to an exclusive boarding school in Bestonia (tourist slogan: The BEST of the -Onias!) where they would learn diplomacy, fencing, bird mastery, and forest-dwelling.

Soon, it was Halloween. 28 children didn’t come back from Trick-or-Treating. They may have eaten so much sugar that they’d gone feral, living in the town’s central park, their costumes patched up as they fell into disrepair with leaves, feathers and mud layered over rubber masks. That was Uncle Earwort’s theory, but as he never visited the central park, but this theory is not regarded as terribly likely by those investigating the absence.

“I find it more interesting that 34 made it back,” Earwort has been known to say. “Obviously, as that’s a majority, I must be doing something right.”

Two of them ran away from home. Two of them went to find the two that ran away from home. Eight were seduced by strangers in online chat rooms, but it worked out, and they’re all married now and living in Kansas.

“True love wins,” Uncle Earwort was quoted as saying. “How many of you are left?” he was often known to ask. “And do you all still have separate names?”

Thirteen of the remaining children got into politics, which lead to seven of them getting deported. (Turns out their original adoption lacked some important paperwork.) Of the remaining 15, 14 went on to endure lives of quiet desperation.

The last one … THE LAST ONE IS BEHIND YOU RIGHT NOW!

Oh man, Halloween season, am I right?

Seriously, though. Please take good care of this orphan.

 

twitter stuff

 

hand o’ glory courtesy of Amanda Summers

 

ending theme song

Thanks for joining us again this week, or for failing to notice the unsubscribe button at the bottom of this email. Or reading it as part of the Facebook page I set up to provide a forum for feedback, or to share behind the scenes info.

Whatever got you here, thanks for being the reason I’ve stuck to giving up swathes of Sundays to knock this project out.

—Michael Van Vleet

lost time incident 36
This week: Musing on the naming of clown-faced murder boys, a haunted podcast, and some other words all in a row.

Hey everyone! Welcome back, welcome back. It is hot as heck where I am, because summer comes late in these parts. But somehow I’m keeping my water-filled limbs moving to put this newsletter together. My shoes are full of sand. Sand that used to be my feet. This is climate change. It’s here already.

My eyeballs are like 3 week old grapes. Like a deflated soccer ball floating in an almost empty swimming pool. The sun outside has removed its cool guy sunglasses and is just muttering.

Just muttering.

Muttering’s not cool.

black birds and face-painted clown revenge
A subscriber to this very newsletter was complaining on social media last week about THE CROW. Do you remember that beloved entertainment franchise? Goth-zombie revenge fantasy? Cure lyrics and Brandon Lee? I saw that film opening night, as it fulfilled both “sad teen” and “superhero” entertainment requirements in one neat little package. Like all young men, I demanded brutal efficiency to maximise my idle time.

Anyway, our friend was complaining that Brandon Lee’s character, the protagonist of THE CROW, is named Eric Draven. Which is a short hop from Eric D. Raven. And ravens are a different species from crows.

I’m sure we’re all thinking: Well, it’s not like Eric chose for a supernatural crow to lead him back from death to avenge his own murder. He may not even have noticed how ridiculous his own name was in juxtaposition, considering his path to vigilante murder.

But did you know there’ve been a number of CROW sequels? And each protagonist has a name that’s bird adjacent? We have Ashe Corven (since crows are corvids), Jimmy Cuervo (which is Spanish for crow) and Alex Corvis.

Which lead me to imagine a meeting where a film producer helps a CROW writer get started.

PRODUCER: There’s two things I know about The Crow. ONE: He’s gotta wear make-up. TWO: He’s gotta have a name what means something like “crow.”

WRITER: Well, we were going to call this next one—

PRODUCER:    JOHN BLACKBIRDY

WRITER: Or we could—

PRODUCER:    JULIO JACKDAW-CAWFEATHERS

(hours later)

PRODUCER:     BEAKMAN THREETOES WINGFELLA

(The room is empty… a water bottle slowly rolls off the meeting room table onto the floor.)

PRODUCER: And maybe he could drink Crow-ca-Cola. Get me the Coke people on the line!

(The office lights, tied to motion sensors after hours, turn off, leaving the producer in the dark.)

twittery

Other spooky podcasts:

SOUNDS FROM OUR BASEMENT: Every week, a compilation of all the sounds the hosts heard, so you understand why they don’t go down there.

THE METAL DRAGGING ON CONCRETE POWER HOUR: Join a celebrity guest as they drag heavy tools along a concrete floor. This week: Charlie Day and a pitchfork!

I DON’T EVEN REMEMBER SUBSCRIBING TO THIS: Composed of the ambient sounds of your own home, but with some unfamiliar breathing. At first, you’re not sure you’re hearing anything, because you hear the same sounds with your headphones on or off (assuming you’re listening at home). But then there’s this weird breathing that only comes through on the podcast. What’s that about?

GOODBYE HICCUPS: Every week, at some point in this 30 minute show, someone’s going to yell BOO really loud. Should startle you and cure those hiccups.

ending theme song
It’s too hot. That’s all you get. I have to get back to letting all the water in my body return to its cloud kingdom. Please don’t miss me when I’m gone. I will be there any time it rains. If it ever rains again.

Also: You may recall that in a previous installment— and with the aid of the Facebook page I set up for this newsletter— I tried to host a giveaway for a free copy of SEXTRAP DUNGEON, a comedic choose-your-own-adventure ebook. But nobody won the thing.

So if you don’t already have a copy, and you’re quick on the draw, this ought to be the link you click on to claim the ebook for free. First come, first served. Luckily for the rest of you, just by virtue of subscribing, you’re also natural born winners! Hooray!

Okay. That’s enough of that.

—Michael Van Vleet