Your New Gravedigger: A Checklist

Drinks (check all that apply)
[ ] Schnapps, Whiskey or other easily sippable and concealable
heartwarming cordial
[ ] Before working
[ ] While working
[ ] Constantly

Smokes
[ ] Top
[ ] Bugle
[ ] Kite
[ ] Things found on ground

Humming (at least two)
[ ] Tuneless
[ ] Vague
[ ] Eerie
[ ] No Top 40
[ ] Droning in and out
[ ] About time, women, or luck, but something that is lost

Hands (check all that apply)
[ ] Gnarled
[ ] Knobby
[ ] Gnarly
[ ] Calloused
[ ] Scratched
[ ] Chapped
[ ] Chaffed
[ ] Dirty
[ ] Bleeding
[ ] Holding Shovel

Ass
[ ] Cold
[ ] Frozen
[ ] Gelid
[ ] Blue
[ ] Surprisingly attractive

Humor
[ ] "morbid" sense of humor
[ ] "morbid" sense of "humor"
[ ] "morbid" "sense of" "humor"
[ ] De'th's no laughin' matter, laddie

Chatter
[ ] Pithy
[ ] Bitchy
[ ] Weather Related
[ ] Scriptual
[ ] Moody Blues Lyrics
[ ] Portentous
[ ] Omenous
[ ] Foreboding
[ ] Talks to dog, owl or shovel
[ ] Salty
[ ] Vengeful
[ ] Hard to follow

Calls dog
[ ] Rufus
[ ] Ol' Spooner
[ ] Beelzebub
[ ] Mother

Character (one or more)
[ ] Bad
[ ] Queere
[ ] Stotic
[ ] Indifferent
[ ] Dry
[ ] Shot
[ ] Morbid
[ ] Moribund
[ ] Clownish
[ ] Diabolical
[ ] All Nerves
[ ] No Nerves
[ ] Salt of the Earth
[ ] Hope to Return to School
[ ] Hope to Avoid Jail
[ ] Sleeping

Wakes Up
[ ] muttering
[ ] screaming
[ ] swinging
[ ] drinking

Taste in Pornography (one or more)
[ ] Empty Juggs Magazine
[ ] Apparently Legal
[ ] More Woman Than Women
[ ] Civil War Historian
[ ] Doll Collector Monthly

Stew
[ ] Irish
[ ] Own juices
[ ] In same thermos as bourbon

Experiences:

Education Level

Schooled by

[ ] Ma
[ ] Pa
[ ] Brother/Sister, later identied as actual parent
[ ] The Streets
[ ] The Road
[ ] The Evil That Men Do


Degree Attained

[ ] Some reform school, released
[ ] Some reform school, burned down
[ ] Merchant Marine, jumped ship
[ ] Some college, neglected to write thesis


War
[ ] Foriegn
[ ] Civil
[ ] Own Personal

Shot a Man in Reno
[ ] To watch him die
[ ] So wife or sweetheart of man could watch man die
[ ] Because needed shooting
[ ] Accidentally
[ ] "Accidentally"
[ ] Felt bad for shooting man's wife

Has dug
[ ] Pet's grave
[ ] Some graves
[ ] Many a grave
[ ] Best friend's grave
[ ] Own grave
[ ] Your grave


Hopes
[ ] None
[ ] To dig more graves
[ ] y'don't mind the mud none
[ ] To get out of the rain


Happy Hallowe'en

TURN #86: WEEK 72; WORDS: 80,0385
NEXT BY 8 NOVEMBER 2006

Getting in Shape for Halloween II

People think of the whole Goth thing as passive, which is true, but it’s not just passive: it’s passive aggressive.

That’s where the Halloween workout comes in.

To review: most exercise equipment is black anyway. Get yourself a black Nalgene, scent it with lavender and ashes.

Cinema gives us many fine examples of the appropriate workout:











Ideally you strip down in the moonlight. If there’s no moonlight, you can light some candles.

You workout alone.

Write:
THROUGH ME IS THE CITY OF PAIN
THROUGH ME IS THE ETERNAL SORROW
THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST

Across your workout mirror. Realize that you are the gate through which you must pass and the hinge upon which it turns. Advanced students may wish to smash the mirror.

A workout is about transformation. This is where you realize you are the Dragon. You are beautiful. You are a great becoming. You cannot be hurt by bullets.

Finally, play “Bela Lugosi is Dead”.



It is actually the perfect workout song. Forget about “Jump” or “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” This song is really long. By the end of it, it’s like you’re endlessly rowing to some distant ghostly shore where you finally arrive all pumped and covered with a cold, cold dewy sweat.

Most importantly. Listen to the Count. The Count will make you strong.


TURN #85: WEEK 71; WORDS: 79,9906
NEXT BY 1 NOVEMBER 2006

Life Among the Mannequins

Unable and powerless to circumvent my miseries, daunted, discouraged and unable to face reality, I felt myself to be unworthy of human company and so took to exile. I had no skills and no achievements. Of abilities, I had only my habits, which was to stand around all day doing nothing, this and that I was in fairly good physical shape. These being my sole attributes, I resigned myself to cross over to the other side of humanity’s double, on the opposite side of the glass, to a land where everything is cool and clear, perfect and pleasing to the eye: I went to live among the mannequins.

Life among the mannequins is ever fashionable. We live in your future: sweaters stretch across our perfect bosoms while you still swelter, and our matchless bellybuttons pucker above brave swimsuits while you shiver.

We are a sensibly evolved race, only those who need heads and arms have them. But each is a perfect exemplar of what it is. None of us have eyes, but, being perfect, like numbers, we have nothing to see, nothing to admire and nothing of which to be jealous. We are gracious in accepting your gazes. We are your royalty: you dress us in your finest, you carry us, you display us to represent you.

Sexless and perfect, immune to decay and age, born fully formed, we are more like angels than men. Indeed, in the story of creation told by mannequins, God, who like us, is perfect and immortal, made us in his own image, but first, wanting to get his creation right, experimented with clay studies and figures. After many, many trials, he was at last ready and created us, the mannequins and was pleased. Then he realized he had many, many leftover clay figures. Loving all his creations, however unequal, he decided to keep them, only to discover that the unfired clay was prone to rot and lose shape over time. The mud was getting everywhere. He thought that the clay figures might last longer if they were kept somewhere moist with lots of mud to fix them with: so he placed his flawed creations near the mud hole he had scooped out. This was your Garden of Eden. Despite all the moisture and the mud, the poor things kept falling apart, so perhaps he gave you procreation. In any case, so the story goes, he gave us to you, so that you might have something to look up to and to know what to wear.

Perfect in proportion and lack of detail, we are your ideals, your greatest of impossible hopes for yourself: in what sense can it not be said that we created you?

TURN #84: WEEK 70; WORDS: 79,648
NEXT BY 25 OCTOBER 2006

A Small, Yet Stimulating Guide to Erotic Punctuation

As the notorious inventor of the erotic chess story, people often ask me “what is it that makes your erotic stories so absolutely devastating, so painfully lascivious, terrifying and carnal, so hot and wet that I felt I must rip myself to shreds and committed incest with my brother in the parking lot of that car wash?” The answer is, of course, that I care. Not only that: I care. As a humble student in the world of the erotic arts it is a pleasure to relate my simple, unadorned experiences in incredibly filthy narratives that will soil your imagination forever like a masturbating bat. See what I mean? (Those that are disturbed by the idea of masturbating bats should probably stop here and perhaps jump to here: this is what I do when I can’t take anymore masturbating bats, what with all the screeching, the squeaking, the dizzying weak bobbing beam of the head lamps, the female bats tangling in your hair and the male bats ejaculating in it and the sudden stunning blow to the head that signals a collision with a stalactite).

Other than that, however, there are simple procedural things, the knowledge of which, however cursory and vague, like the location of the clitoris, improve one’s style immensely, the most neglected of which is: punctuation.