6/4/2023

Okay I gave up on writing here because trying out the pride CSS style was a boondoggle. Then my friend Wednesday told me webkit, which is used by the style I used, is buggy as hell since it's an Apple product. I looked for other ways to do rainbow text but they're all crap and I don't have the patience to fuck around with such nonsense unlike me from 2012 who'd waste hours redesigning the site.

Last night I wrote something, long-form, and completed it on Mastodon. At least a very polished first draft rather than a final draft. Perhaps later this week I'll translate it to Esperanto.

the destroyer of worlds

Robert sat in his seat, night-black goggles forward while his lips whispered something. A prayer? An elbow to his ribs broke his concentration,
"What are you doing?" hissed a stage whisper from the elbow's owner.
Robert turned, pushed up the goggles, "I'm reviewing the math and procedures to ensure everything will go off without a hitch." A moment later Robert's mein returned to impassivity, inhuman with the goggles snapped back over his eyes.
The elbow's owner nodded, feeling a bit shaken by the exchange but why? The loudspeakers began marking time. One more quick glance proved Robert returned to his solenn recital then Elbow pulled the goggles on.

Once upon a time thunder roared across valleys and mankind knelt like penitents towards the voice of this unseen deity, praying for that celestial being to smite their enemies.
What followed, despite the distance from the blast site, made terrestrial thunder into one of Robert's mathematical whispers from seconds ago. A new star found form and, despite the goggles, Elbow kept blinking to rid himself of the terrible afterimage. Something akin to a sphere pierced through with spikes accompanied by a chorus line of lightning bolts dancing on either side of the blast now morphing into a mushroom cloud embodying the full compliment of perdition from all of Earth's known creeds.
With the all clear, goggles were up and off followed by generals and eggheads and politicians shaking each others hands, slapping each other on the back, praising their new ace-in-the-hole to finally bring an end to this global conflict. Some scientists kept their own counsel with Robert only reciting from the Bhagavad Gita.

Later, with several shots in him, Robert whispered, "I created a new god. A god of man. A god of this world, not of cosmic depths nor nightmares. For a single shining moment certain sleeping horrors stirred in their sleep, this time mankind lending them nightmares rather than the other way around."
Elbow could only look on with pity and some fear. Clearly the single malt wasn't playing Cricket with Oppenheimer's marbles.
"It was their words which were channeled by Al Hazzard. Alien words by alien tongues and hands rendered into madness by a mortal who was nothing more than an ant in New York City. It's why we went mad when we tried to comprehend those noisome couplets, don't you know?"
"Now we're the ones who are sending back our own messages. I found the math in that ancient book and deciphered it, learned the words of making, an alien tetragrammaton of mathematical purity given form by physics, and awakened here in southern New Mexico."
"If you must know then the stars will now never be right enough for them to awaken, frolic, and teach mankind new ways to shout and kill for we have discovered it for ourselves. Had they come and taught us, they could easily take away their gift but I am a modern Prometheus and unlike Zeus these beings are wise and practical with no hubris behind their actions. We've won two wars. The one still raging in Japan and the other looming from our future."

"I am truly become death, the destroyer of worlds."

Then Robert Oppenheimer emptied the contents of his stomach on the bar room floor. The tall, old negro behind the counter smiled and walked around with a bucket of sawdust.

As the bartender addressed the unexpected protein spill, he whispered, "If only you knew how right this man is. You all are sons of bitches. Shouldn't have never told him the key but he wouldn't leave well enough alone."

Elbow looked again at the poor old negro now staring back at him. Those eyes were beyond black. Rather twin voids sucking in light from around him. Red-gold streamers from the Budweiser sign spiralling into those pits, incandescent bulbs dimming at different rates depending on how close he stood and this unsettling vision was now accompanied by a voice echoing like cosmic thunder.
"I tried to warn him. Part of my job." Wine glasses tinkled in their holders above the bar as bottles rattled in front of the mirror's unflinching reflection of a patron's drunkenness and shame. "My conscience is clear" intoned by a void deeper than the Pacific.

A moment later light blossomed throughout the watering hole, Doris Day continued belting out "Sentimental Journey" over the background noise of drunking conversations while Robert snored into the sleeve of his jacket. The vomit, a now-deconstructed burger marinated in single malt scotch, now a tight little glob of sawdust steamed on the floor. A bartender knelt with a dustpan to scoop it up.
"Where'd the colored fella go?"
The bartender glared at Elbow with icy blue eyes barely contrasting with his sclera. "Ain't no niggers here and never will be. If you're a nigger lover then you can take you and your queer friend out of here and back to where you came."

The night was cold for July and the stars shone brighter over the wasteland around them.

"Maybe..." sighed Elbow, "Maybe we had it coming."

Robert stirred, opening his eyes then wrapping his arm around his friend's shoulders and they laughed into each others shoulders at the dawn of a new age.

God willing, mankind's final age.

the inspiration for the story

For one reason or another, I was browsing photos of detonating nuclear weapons and how they formed eerie spheres, deformed only by the rope trick effect. As for the chorus line of lightning bolts, those would be the trails of sounding rockets launched to track the blast's shockwave. It's easy to believe a nuclear weapon could be opening a very small door to the blind nuclear chaos of Azathoth, except here Oppenheimer (with help from Nyarlathotep) broke a key piece of the Necronomicon facilitating humanity to create their own short-lived Azathoth thereby acquiring the ability to stand against the great old ones prophesized to rise when the stars were right.

an old dream from 6/5/2015

Relocated to the couch this morning where I dreamt.

In my dream I took LSD. Not on blotter paper, nor from a dropper, but a pill. Once I felt the pill on my tongue I thought, "Wait a minute. I'm dreaming. Why am I doing LSD while dreaming?"

What does this have to do with the price of water in California?

LSD is a hallucinogen, like DMT and psilocybin. N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is produced by the pineal gland in rats, leading folks to suggest the same goes for humans. Going deeper in the rabbit hole, dreams are just brief, gentle trips regulating the brain.

So if someone's tripping, why the hell would they take another hallucinogen?

Rest of the dream involved Belladonna's car breaking down near my house, and she hung out while waiting for help. No sex, nor any attempts to seduce.