Jeff Mach's Blog, page 36

Carnie Heart

I tried to run away to join the Circus,
with no real idea of what a Circus was,
just that it traveled from place to place,
never tied to a single location,
a single set of thoughts,
a single local yokel insistence that things are Right
in this town, in this burg.
But Wrong in some other place,
some place that sometimes doesn’t even look different.

I know I’m not supposed to let anyone call me a freak,
and I don’t say it’s a word for everyone,
but it’s a word for me:

I am a sport,
a changeling,
I’m one of the Others,
whoever or whatever the Others might be.

I tried to run away to join the Circus because
I was tired of being alone and never fitting in.
I wanted to never fit in amongst a big, roaring tribe
of misfits.

I ran away to find a Greater Show than everyday Earth.
And I ran for a long time before I realized the Circus wasn’t just out of reach;
I simply wasn’t reaching far enough.

I kept thinking that it was easy for everything to become bizarre, but hard to enjoy it.

Know where everyone belongs?
I’m the exception that proves the hypothetical rule; I am a collection of symptoms looking to hunt down a cure and eat it for brunch; I am a whole freakshow all by myself.

Know where everyone is comfortable?
I like comfort. But I don’t want to0 stay comfortable;
I’m restless of mind, restless of spirit,
once I have seen The Most Explosive Explosion in the history of Explosions,
I want to see how it will become greater,
stranger,
boomier

next time;

if Life is going to fire cannons at me,
I want to be fired OUT of a cannon and AT life.8

if I could find Nirvana, it would have to be Pandemonium at the same time,
some intersection of Heaven,
Hell,
the roar of the crowd,
the thunder of drums,
and Pittsburgh,
because if you can get Pittsburgh to pay to see the freaks,
you can sell tickets anywhere.

And I want to be part of a traveling anywhere,
landing just long enough to start hammering tent-poles,

be9

somewhere roiling with
volcanic activity,
plagues of wyverns and merciless fox-demons and deep triple-fried Twinkies,
where everything is as possible as possible
and nothing unreal needs to stay that way.

Gangway:
I am hunting funnel cake,
and woe betide the rube
who gets between it and me.

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The Sidestreet Carnival Bistro

Why is there a little French restaurant at the Circus?
Everything else is so ecstatically garish, so 1812 Overture climactic,
and the restaurant has only a little sign, black and white,
“Bistro”.

It isn’t even one of those signs which is quiet because it happens to have been written on antique wood from the throne of Louis XIV; it was cut in a neat circle by a bandsaw, having started life as part of a now-abandoned thrift-store shelf. It was painted by hand.

The real big shots, the fancy people, the ones who come to the circus in a five-piece-suit as if they’re likely, at any time, to be flown out by helicopter to deal with a hostile merger which threatens a valuable one-sixteenth of the price of a share of stock,

The Beautiful People, who know they’re beautiful because they look just like photos in an old-time fashion magazine,

though they’re worse conversationalists–

Oh, they all make jokes about slumming it,
and they eat their funnel cake with the attitude of
rugged adventurers taking on an unplumbed cavern –

yeah, they walk past this place a thousand times.

It’s dark inside, not uncomfortably, just candle-lit and dim; were this any other part of the Carnivale,
you’d assume you were in for a magick show, or perhaps a bit of a trick;

until you see the proprietor,
a proud man,
but not an arrogant one,

a man who serves the harshest of Regents:
constant, hand-created, repeated perfection.

It is the proprietess who greets you,
makes you at home,
skips a few English words in this little pocket-Universe of Paris,
and even if you are French,
you don’t know how this will play out;

as the chef and the maitre-d’
join hands at the front of the restaurant,
wait for just a moment to let the conversation quiet at its own piece,
and,
married these forty years, in a low tenor and a high alto voice,
they sing, unaccompanied,
“La Vie En Rose”,

and all is roses.

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The Circus Is Coming

there.

Right there, under-inside the wind,
there’s that hintlet of the very best Autumn,
the one which never happened,
the one which is every wander-hungry contentment
of both coming home
(finally!)
and at the same time, of that famous Road,

the one that beckons adventure,
and then suddenly delivers!

In a propolsive, combustive stormwhirl
of sparks,

as the great brass wheels
turn with the tug of the crank
that winds
and winds
kinetic energy into
the whole Brobdingnagian
and glorious
Circus.

This is not the Circus Maximus,
because it’s impossible to imagine that this unfurling firmament-tent,
the neverending Midway,

could ever
be any kind
of Minimus.

The tempest-beast
stopped downpouring a moment before
Dawn.

A moment before
that
all was the inexhaustible and triumphant near-hurricane,
the cloud-captured deep full Moon,
and that blast,

the lightning,
the lightning
which knew, like a heavy-dancing pugilist,
when to hold back,
and precisely when
to strike
the unspeakably tall and golden weathervane

which seized the spark,
and began to wind
the escapement

of the deceptively tiny and indomitable
bounce-engine
which powers
the brilliant Disturbance

which is the Circus,
waking,
arriving,
stretching languidly from skytip to skytop,
drinking an ocean
of coffee-laced adrenaline,

ready
to wake up
parts of yourself
that you never knew
dreamed.

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Roustabout Champagne

…but there is Champagne,
always Champagne,

even in the leanest times,

someone,
somewhere,

has a bottle stowed away

because even a trapeze artist
sometimes needs a lift of the spirit.

Even the Lion Disagreer,
and the Bearded Nonesuch,
neither of whom drink a drop,

feel the heliumating rise of the heart
when the Champagne pops,

like a flashbulb celebrating a radiant 1930s film star,
like a fusilade of fireworks,
like a regimental 21-thousand gun salute,

when the boyant orbs within make their excited upward rush,
even those who don’t like champagne
(if pure palate pleasure were the point,
wouldn’t we just chill some Lillet?)–

even for them,
they recognize that this is one drink which is just like
their Big Top home:

Bubbling, exploding out from containment,
overflowing,

too soon gone,

leaving intoxication,
and warmly-blurred foreveries

in its wake.

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Finding Heroes

Oh, no. Is it heroes you seek?
Then find the one who are wholly on flic,

the ones who get spotlights, the one who make gestures,
The ones who never face really pressures –

Then look in the shadows, their shadows, and find
The ones with forethought, questions, mind.

The Heroes look great. But a wise detective
Will look for the ones who are actually effective,

Often out of the limelight. Usually unsung.
Usually knocked around by life, and stung.

The ones with qualms and uncertainties,
The ones who run when you say, “Freeze!”

The one who compromise, and listen
And don’t ignore their own sins of ommission.

And if the real heroes from Villains are hard to tell:
You’ve found the ones who do,

instead of just sell.

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Cthulhu Pie Recipe

Cthulhu Low Carb Blueberry Pie by “The Recipe For You”, commissioned by The Dark Lord.

INGREDIENTS for Low carb Pie Crust:

1 cup sifted almond flour
1/4 cup coconut flour
1/4 cup monk fruit sweetener (powdered)
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup butter melted

Bottom Pie Crust Instructions:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together dry ingredients first and mix well

2. Add butter to dry ingredients and mix until it resembles chunky crumbs then press into

your pie plate. You may use parchment paper to help you smooth out the pie crust into

the pie plate and make sure it goes up the sides as well.

3. Poke the pie crust with a fork all over

4. Bake pie crust unfilled at 325 degrees F for 7-10 minutes then set aside to COOL

before adding your filling, it wont be completely cooked yet just ready for your filling.

____

INGREDIENTS for Low carb Blueberry Pie Filling:

1 ½ cups of fresh blueberries (leave a few good blueberries to the side for the eyeballs)
1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice
1/4  cup and 1 tbsp of monk fruit sweetener (granular)

Pie Filling instructions:

1. Mix all filling ingredients in a medium size bowl until well incorporated

_____

INGREDIENTS for Top dough for making Cthulhu

2 cups shredded whole milk mozzarella cheese
3 ounces cream cheese
1 1/2 cups superfine blanched almond flour
1 teaspoon psyllium husk powder
1 large egg
3 tbsp powdered monk fruit sugar

1. Place the shredded mozzarella cheese and cream cheese in a microwave safe bowl.
Microwave in 30 second increments until melted and well mixed (about 1-2 minutes)

2. Add the almond flour, psyllium husk powder, monk fruit and egg to the cheese mixture

and still well with a form until soft dough forms.

3. Knead dough by hand to make sure the ingredients are fully combined.

_____

Pie Assembly Instructions:

1. Add blueberry filling in cool pie crust

2. Separate TOP dough in 1/2 and use 1 part to shape into the head of your Cthulhu and

the other 1/2 is for the tentacles. For the head you want to lay it on a flat surface and

cut into the shape you want. Create 2 holes for the eyes and put in some blueberries

underneath to shape the eyeballs. Make sure to add lids and make him look angry. For the

tentacles its best to roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper and cut

into tentacles, shape as you want on the pie.

3. Put in preheated 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Keep an eye

out on the tentacles they may burn if in there too long.

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An Honest Universal Public Announcement

As I am an ancient creature from the Before Times, I had my first marketing job in 1997. Back then, you had to have a somewhat successful company to start issuing terrible press releases, all of them making clumsy attempts to make incredibly non-newsworthy products into products people might somehow see in the news and (for no really compelling reason) purchase.

As with so many things, the Universal Blessing of Social Media, the vast technological architecture which destroys the cares and worries of the past by inventing an endless bounty of woes which make all prior pain feel numb in comparison –

Social Media, the great panacea, brought its many benefits to terrible marketing. Now, we’re so used to press releases that no company is too mighty to be really, really bad at it, and no company is too small to add to the crushing weight of electronic trash under which we have buried the fragmentary remnants of our remaining hopes and dreams.

Still, many corporations struggle with how to make poorly-written public statement.

I thought I would help, because I am a helper.

 

As you may know, some thing happened. It either happened with us and we’re trying to pretend it’s newsworthy; or it happened in the bigger world, and we’re pretending we’re a part of it. This marks a major, impactful change in this dynamic industry.Given this release, we wanted to share an update on how The Company That Totally Wouldn’t Lie To You is adapting to these changes. We will begin prompting anyone with appropriate parasitic electronic mind-control circuits already installed. We’re also making key updates across various products, including several links on our website that you have never even seen because the idea of having an intuitive user interface, as opposed to a painfully complicated one which pushes you to spend money because you can’t seem to find anything without doing that and we work real hard to convince you it’s you, when we totally made this problem; I mean, you know that thing where casinos used to have no windows and no clocks so it created a hermetic environment where you’d be able to pretend the dough you’re losing isn’t really real because you don’t have any of the things humans require, such as sunlight and meaningful communication? The whole damn Internet is like that now, only moreso.Now, the new changes may briefly convenience you, but we will fix that. As soon as we determine that too many people are getting substantive value out of what we’re doing without paying every cent we can possibly milk out of them, we’ll change everything around to make it vastly more unpleasant, with the perpetual promise that there’s something real, real good just a couple of clicks away.But the real good thing, like Tomorrow, never comes; like Xeno’s Paradox, you can get closer and closer to happiness, but you’ll never make it, not because you’re not capable of being happy – oh, you are absolutely physically abl to be happy; even if you have severe depression, things could feel better than they do now. Do you remember that old comic strip where that kid was always trying to kick a football, knowing the jerk holding it was always, always going to pull it away at the last moment? If you don’t know it, the moral of the story was supposed to be something about this guy never learning, but seriously, the real lesson was: the dickwad with the football was a stone-cold sociopath, who kept preying on her victim’s empathy and desire to do good and deliberately causing him pain because she liked it.The whole thing’s like that. And we assure you, we will be regularly releasing product updates to help maintain stability of lasting depression and improve performance of anxieties along the way.In conclusion, the World is a giant, luxurious bathtub filled with marvelously refreshing water and enticing, aromatic oils, and you have our solemn process that after we’ve taken the bath, we’ll feed you a droplet or two of used bathwater. Because we’re all in this together, except you, obviously.

 

 

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A Vicious Little Steampunk Alphabet – L-Q

L – Llamas rhyme beautifully with “pyjamas”.
Unfortunately, nothing rhymes with “pyjamas”.

M – Megaladons are a favorite Lost World fauna;
Eat the whole thing (you know you wanna.)

M – Northmen aren’t period-correct for Victorian flare,
But since they’re Vikings, they don’t care.

O – Orcs assuredly would not pass
(Unless you make them out of brass.)

P – There are so many Penumbrae for us to spend time in;
We’re going to need a bigger Tellurian.

Q – Q’s for Quicksilver, pride of Mercury.
Dear Chirurgeon: Please don’t put any more in me.

R – Oh, oil’s measured by viscousity;
And Steampunk by Ridiculosity.

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An Unnecessarily Geeky Sith Response

This is a response to The Stupendous Wave’s video,

Why Darth Sidious Is So Powerful – Star Wars Theory

This was a quick off-the-cuff note. There’s actually a lot I’d like to discuss, at some point, but this was just a piece of my reaction.

I am insufferably nerdy on the subject of the Dark Side of the Force. Sorry.

____

You really really really really really don’t know the power of the Dark Side. You’re comparing Revan, a failed Sith who couldn’t hack it and was only able to succeed because he was against fairly inferior Sith. Bane was self-taught outside of what was basically one year at the Sith Academy. He would have cut Revan into lots of little pieces. The basic problem here is that you have this Jedi-like aversion to seeing the Force as something more than a good way to do more backflips than a normal human. The Force permeates everything (with a few stark exceptions – ask Mr. Zahn how the Ysalimari actually evolved their abilities; no-one else knows) – and the Force is everywhere. There are no known limits to the Force; there are only limits to Force-users. I actually love Luke; but do you think he could control an entire Empire fleet while also engaging in a physical and psychological duel involving himself and two of the most talented Force-users of their day. The Dark Side is struggle. It gains strength from struggle – as per, for example, the fact that Darth Vader is in constant pain at all times. Dark Side users gain power, as you note, from passion, not peace. If Sidious’ nature made it easy and pleasant to be a Sith, he would have had fun, but he would have lacked a major source of energy: his own hurt. He might have enjoyed betraying his Master, but he was not unsaddened by it. The first stage of being a Sith is passion. Graduating to the victory which breaks your chains involves having deep feelings, some of which would be extremely uncomfortable; you can’t CHOOSE the Dark Side if the Dark Side is all you would ever want by nature. You’d be a slave to your nature, and not your Will; and thus, you’d be a weak Sith, not a powerful one.

___

Note:

I am a Dark Lord. I am not a Sith Lord because they are mythological and I am, as far as I can tell, real. I do not claim to know everything about the Dark Side of the Force.

But I hate seeing the Dark Side’s twisted corruption of the human spirit in service to (in that Universe) “power, unlimited power” – turned into a parlor trick that’s just easy if you’re mean.

 

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Ridiculous Rhyming Ruminations

In the semi-immortal words of Gary Larsen, “It was late, and I was tired.”

____

Never argue with an Amazon
Riding on Charonzon.

The Devil doesn’t really wear Prada;
the Devil usually wears nada.

The chickens have come home to roost;
they want a quiet place to read some Proust.

The hand is quicker than the eyes,
But both of them go well with fries.

(And please beware of UFOs;
They won’t give it back when they’ve got your nose.

I got what I wanted as a kid;
I’m finally a Giant Squid.

I’ll bet you money you’re mistaken
On the pronunciation of “Kraken”.

Tiggers are made of ruber and springs;
be grateful that they don’t have wings.

Damn the Torpedos;
pass the Doritos.

Handle me always with care;
the kind of Wolf I am is Were.

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