NorsePlay: A Yank At Valhalla.

Not to let the hokey Twain-ist title fool you, Edmond Hamilton's A Yank at Valhalla delivers a Norse-inspired genre mash-up in fine pulp style.

[Original pulp from January 1941.]

Part lost civilization fantasy, part science fiction, Hamilton plays with the idea that behind mythology lies a greater truth.
Physicist Keith Masters, during an exploratory survey flight, gets blown into a hidden area of the arctic where he discovers the secret lands of the Norse Gods.

[An Ace double version from 1973.]

Stylewise, the many typos (a pulp given) are unexpectedly balanced out by some lovely .50-cent word selections, and it's neat shifting gears as a reader between scientific terms and medieval descriptors. This integrated juxtaposition aside, a lot of the presentation is stirring with cries of "Our swords for Asgard!", impressive feasting hall settings, and saga worthy melees & martial battles.

[UK re-titled version from 1950. And Freya's going to fall out of that top at any moment.]

While the start isn't as fast as Lester Del Rey's The Day of the
Giants (1950), they share a conceit that a mid-century modern man can think more clearly and problem solve better than an immortal, which here is still a false conceit, and one finds Masters a few times saying things like, "Score one for my science!" to convince us, but not successfully. Anachronistic of this, Masters flies a "rocket plane", which is more than bleeding edge technology in 1940, even for a well-
funded polar expedition.

[Interior art from Fantastic Story 1953 January pulp.]

We suspect this early NorsePlay also possibly influenced Ian Cameron's Island At the Top of the World from 1961 where a polar foray stumbles onto a Viking civilization survival. And
the mix of high-tech with ancient dress reminds us of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby's Thor, which began in 1962, where the science is implied, but not overt, and one wonders if either of them read this beforehand.

[More interior art from Fantastic Story 1953 January pulp.]

In terms of what was going on in 1940, we have an American character with no horse in the race between the Aesir & the Jotuns, getting involved for various circumstantial reasons in what may very well become Ragnarok. This raises the question if Hamilton possibly wrote this as an appeal for a
U.S. entry into WW2. While the text always has the battles as being against the odds, the Viking ethos of combat being a necessary facet to support civilization and that risk being celebrated is prominent in the novella.

[This same side-saddle valkyrie on colourless Bifrost art was also used for a later NorsePlay: Lester Del Rey's The Day of the Giants, except it was re-titled When the World Tottered.]

With pulp motifs, A Yank at Valhalla also presents the idea of the hidden subterranean. Using the dwarves (here labeled the Alfings) and a radioactive Muspelheim as a pre-surface dwelling and advanced technological world, this presages The Shaver Mystery's pulps/memoirs by half a decade:
"This was no mere cavern, but an enormous hollow such as many have believed was left under the planet's surface by the hurling forth of the Moon." (p.96)

In a current young adult novel landscape of Riordan's Magnus Chase and Armstrong's The Blackwell Pages, where overweening teen sass underqualifies as optimism, going back to an early NorsePlay like Hamilton's A Yank At Valhalla yields more imaginative treasure.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+. 

Twin Peaks: The Resolution.

You waited 25 years for Twin Peaks: The Return. You finished it. And you still want answers. Here they are as only Dark Entries can provide them:

Alt-dimensional Dale: The secret no one knows when Laura whispers in Dale's ear is how to save her. In order to save Laura, Dale travels back in time to pull her away from her bondage cabin date with Jacques, Ronette, & Leo. By doing this, Dale effectively prevents her from meeting her fate at Bob/Leland's hands in the train car. When the past gets pulled out of true, Laura is whisked away to an alternate reality where she (and Dale, and Diane) are no longer who they originally were. The Twin Peaks we knew is in the dimension that Dale & Diane drive away from to follow now-displaced Laura, leaving behind the changed dimensional reality where Laura never got murdered. When Dale asks what year it is in his final line, it's the wrong question because he's made the false assumption that people in the parallel dimension are going to be in the same place.

Three Dimension Shell Game: Dale travels across three dimensions. First, he's in the prime dimension where the action for the whole show mostly takes place and where Laura stays dead. Second, he goes into the past to rescue Laura, and this action alone creates this secondary dimension/branching timeline where Laura never gets killed that runs parallel to the first. His intention is to bring Laura back to the primary future, but time proves too inelastic and moves Laura into a tertiary dimension where Dale & Diane then follow her to.

Diane Once-Removed: Diane & Dale both drive into the alternate dimension knowing on some level things aren't going to be the same. When Diane sees her double at the road motel, it's a presentiment that she's not going to remain herself, and weeps during her sex with Dale, covering his face/identity with her hands, sad that so soon after getting her freedom from the Black Lodge, she's only going to lose herself again so soon. The note Dale finds in the morning proves this as Diane has unwillingly assumed the alt-dimension's identity of Linda on the parting missive.

Laura-Now-Carrie: Although Laura has effectively helped rescue herself, her saving isn't what Dale or she expected. When Dale shows up at Carrie's house in Odessa, she pauses at the mention of Sarah Palmer's name. There's a frisson of recognition that occurs, and in part for that reason goes with Dale on the road trip up to Twin Peaks. After finding the Palmers' house occupied by the Tremonds instead, that frisson increases to a disturbing remembrance of her previous parallel existence as Laura when that realization evokes a momentary overlap of dimensional reality and we hear Sarah Palmer calling for Laura on the morning of her death.

Not Who but What is Laura?: The White Lodge creates Laura as the firestopper response for Bob. She's the irresistible attractant so Bob doesn't wreak a worse havoc in the greater world (as seen by Bob/ersatz Dale's globally spanning criminal activities after Laura's death). This irresistible attractiveness manifests in her becoming prom queen and her ability to win and manipulate the suitors/lovers/clients in her life. Being such a being made flesh also has its stresses, by which Laura copes with cocaine & other base distractions.

Sarah Palmer's Temporal Cul-De-Sac: Sarah Palmer is Jiao Dai/Judy. Her killing the redneck at the bar unveils this. The repeating fight scene on the TV and looping moment where Sarah tries but cannot damage the iconic picture of her daughter shows that Jiao Dai's machinations have become undone by Dale/White Lodge/Laura's changes to reality and trapped the angry spirit in a looping temporal pocket.

Jiao Dai: The dugpa black lodge wizard otherworld being behind all the misery gains a toehold in the world through a dimensional rip created by the atomic bomb test. As fission destroys matter on a fundamental level, such action allows this dark being to seed Bob into our world, along with the tulpas, the thought construct doppelganger replacements for people, who act as further agents of misery. This misery is what Jiao Dai and many of the other Black Lodgers feed on, which in turn gives them more power. The stalking horse that is Laura draws Jiao Dai & Bob into the Palmer household, and ultimately this attraction to Laura puts them both in a position from which they get defeated.

Institutionalized Audrey: There was always something off about Audrey -- her non-sequiturs, the easy immersion into jazz music, the overconfident near-delusion that she could easily run the hotel or become Dale's intimate assistant. Note her father's mental slip into an imagined Civil War alternate history, her brother's special needs state, and her uncle's manic social disconnect and descent into drug abuse. Given that fragile genetic background (and probable brain damage from the bomb), when waking from her post-bank explosion coma to find herself pregnant from ersatz Dale's hospital visit, her breakdown & father committing her probably came soon after. Audrey's last scene shows her facing a makeup mirror reflection in a white room, revealing that she never was at The Roadhouse. This implies that Charlie is a delusional stand-in for her therapist, given his detached attitude toward his "wife" and her infidelity. The Billy she mentions being involved with is another patient at the asylum, who's passingly talked about by a pair of girls at the club earlier on as scaling a six-foot fence and subsequently bleeding from his nose & mouth from his recent escape, which is why Audrey's worried over his absence and keeps plying Charlie with questions as to where he is.

Richard Horne's Father: Ersatz Dale reveals this when Richard is electrosploded at the false coordinates with his line, "Farewell, my son." While we spend most of the show presuming Richard to be John Justice Wheeler's or possibly Charlie's offspring with Audrey, he's a truly badder breed of seed.

Dead Becky Briggs: We see bombed out of his mind husband Steven Burnett in the forest holding a gun, being held by his lover Gersten Hayward. Gersten tries to absolve Steven by saying "it" wasn't his fault, it was his wife's, and he was stoned. He's inconsolable and when Gersten hides herself to conceal her affair from the other trailer park resident walking his dog, Steven takes the opportunity to kill himself. The why of "it" all is that he killed his wife Becky sometime before this scene in retribution for her shooting through the door of Gersten's apartment in trying to kill them.

The Poor Bagboy: Sarah Palmer keeps Deputy Hawk firmly outside the door, while we hear a few noises from inside the house in the background. Later we see a thick line of dark fluid across the TV room's carpet and alot of miserable noise coming from offscreen. While some of this is Sarah Palmer/Jiao Dai, some of it doesn't sound like her at all. When Sarah has the episode at the grocery store checkout line, she leaves her groceries there. The bagboy haplessly decides to take them after the event to her house ... where he is tied up & gagged in the kitchen and subject to the untender ministrations of Jiao Dai!

Probable Happy Endings: Big Ed & Norma live happily-ever-after. Witnessing this influences Shelly to reunite with Bobby. Nadine's fangirl hookup with Dr Amp/widower Jacoby becomes something more. Josie lives and ends up with Harry. Reunited construct Dougie & Janey-E continue far better off than when they started. The Mitchum Brothers enjoy being beneficent to others with their settlement money and share the polyamorous dedication of their girlfriend trio under one roof.

[Zoom in to the detail on those individually decorated doughnuts!]

Final Explanations: In David Lynch's Mulholland Drive & Lost Highway, identities become a malleable construct, and characters becoming unmoored from who they are is a mechanism in the Lynchverse. Lynch originally drafted Mulholland Drive as a spin-off from TV to movie where Audrey goes to Hollywood to try her luck as an actress, and the film uses a very shadow hobo-like figure of dread to provide a box that unlocks an alternate dimension where the main character's situation is distinctly different. A Lynch interview mentions that Lost Highway takes place in the same world that Twin Peaks is in. Lost Highway's protagonist at a certain point in the film passes through a doorway and becomes another person, but at film's end is aware of his dual identity. The one identity's wife and the other identity's girlfriend are both played by Patricia Arquette as two different characters, which also illustrates the overlapping realities of those identities. Also a Mystery Man shows the uncanny ability to be bi-located at a party in front of a protagonist and on a landline phone from that same protagonist's house. Maddie & Laura as "twin cousins" and Maddy's feelings of identity-displacement also support the above. Lynch draws heavily from dreams, an experience where one often is themselves but also not themselves at the same time. Lynch also runs an organization for transcendental meditation. Given the Buddhist context of meditation, plus their karmic wheel of existence where one expunges attachments in order to find enlightenment, leaving behind the ego of identity to become one with the divine, or reincarnating to try again and forced to forget ones previous incarnations, follows. Also moving away from secular explanations in general is perhaps Lynch's punchline as "jiao dai" literally means "to explain" in Chinese. Lynch applies these possibilities of polyvalent identities/realities to expand the boundaries of narrative, to make us unsettled at our own valued sense of self, to evoke the fear of the unreliability of perceived existence, and to make us listen for the divine secret that can be whispered into our ear if we only know how to hear it.

[Afterword: Thanks to my wife +Michelle H. for staying up last night after the finale to talk for four hours (since we weren't going to sleep anyway until we figured it all out), thanks to Mitch +George Proctor for hosting us this whole season and sharing our love of Twin Peaks and forwarding the Chinese translation to add to this piece, and +Natalie Carey  for theming out the dessert tray & coffee that fueled this Black Lodge explanitory fire. Also to Óðinn & Baldr who inspired that last line with their story and its secret.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

in The Red Room of Requirement with The Pottermouthed Girls.

In a very special episode of Ruminations From the Red Room, host, dear friend, and person of exception Mitch +George Proctor allowed Dark Entries the privilege of inviting +Gwyen Raamat & +Melissa Kailani Negelspach, the duo known far & wide as The Pottermouthed Girls to podcast about most people's favourite wizardboi & his world.

Listen to us here.

Mitch's blurb:

We speak with Gwen and The Unicorn, champions of the Geeks Who Drink, masters of the Potter knowledge, and keepers of the words. The ladies join Guillermo to sit, and wax poetic, philosophical, and literal on J.K. and her work. Comparisons are unavoidable to greats like Professor Tolkien, and we work together to sort out our feelings, and fandom. It’s really just a get to know you, to prep for next time when the gloves really come off.

Gwyen the Valkyrie & Melissa the Unicorn are the people I know who are most passionate about the wizarding world. They read the books annually, keep up with the Pottermore site, and can probably cast all the spells in their sleep faster than you can think Avada Kedavra. Ergo, we knew it was going to be the goodness when we sat behind Mitch's three magic (and one less than magic since Mitch gave me the one from the muggle's back alley dollar store) mics to use our literary divination skills.

[I will beat you for Slytherin!]

We fan-out, and much more importantly, we examine why HP's a global cultural phenomenon and not just another kids' book series that people trade in for gas money once they graduate from high school.

Also we discuss the vacuum of a post-Saxon mythology for England that Tolkien attempted to fill, how Rowling successfully built upon that, and how these NorsePlays rest on the most fantastic foundation of all that is Norse Mythology & Lore.

So put on your house colours (green & silver rule, fool!) and strap on your extendable ears for a pleasant time on the Red Room Express Train.

[Ride or die!]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

the steamgirl on a train.

The more often I see models posed on top of the highly dangerous coupling rods & wheels of steam engines, the more I realize how no steampunk in their right mind would ever risk actually sitting on them.

The above's a well-known & over-posted particular example of an accident just waiting to happen.

It would be the technological parallel to someone posing on the rods of a nuclear reactor core. Maybe daring steampunks could write it off as the alt-hist version of planking, but no. As steampunk photography's meant to show a believable alternate history, then standing on a moving train part you wouldn't ever stand on breaks the premise we strive for.

In establishing an alt-historical world, we require a level of verisimilitude. It's the history we know, but with a major point of deviation, usually technological, but sometimes political or social. To suspend disbelief and entertain the idea that history turned down a different track requires world-building that respects logical action.

I also suffered a defense of the above photo because some undersexed geek superimposed his idea of chivalry on it, as though I didn't appreciate the beauty of the model, which isn't at issue -- the would-be steampunk's lack of thought for personal safety is.

So why does this photo's idiotic motif of the steamgirl on a train persist?

[Pregnant aspiring model Fredzania Thompson, 19, was killed by a freight train after she became stuck between two railroad tracks while posing for this photo shoot.]

In most photography, we are used to a fashion or artistic context.

For fashion, which far outweighs the circulation of art nowadays and so it's the device people are most familiar with, models are asked to pose in outré fashions, against nonsensical & outlandish things, all to get the attention of someone flipping at rapid pace through a magazine, or scrolling down a page so as to get the viewer to pause and buy a line of handbags or designer frocks. For example, the early 1980s Swatch ads had a girl looking through a telescope backwards, posed on one leg, the other leg up behind her, while was wearing sunglasses, and the telescope was pointed down at the ground. Like the steamgirl on a train, none of that makes any real sense, but the cognitive dissonance of the cited ad makes a viewer stop in question and look long enough at what's being worn to segue into desiring the product.

For the artistic, it's emotional aesthetics. A work is presented with a captured tableau that if successful evokes a reaction from the viewer. It could be one of repulsion, joy, agreement, moral uncertainty, social consciousness, fear, anguish, sorrow, et cetera, all depending on a combination of the photographer's intention and the individual internal reflection the viewer brings to the work. With a fair amount of photo manipulation today, we have many examples of cut & paste in order to construct worlds that never were to evoke wonders of another place & time we might desire to see or be in.

The steamgirl on a train fails because it's using the tropes of fashion photography while attempting to show a character from a greater world implied outside the frame. Still people can't see past the sex appeal of the cheesecaking model to the danger of the train, hit the plus button, and don't have discernment to realize the serious incongruence it does to establishing the world it's trying to imply. This hormonal override is why the steamgirl on a train persists.

And outside of these two mores, we have photojournalism like the following:

The photo above's a grisly and all-too-real example of what being too near a train at the wrong time does to a person. Newspapers tend to refuse to run photos like these because, as one professor I had in my journalism degree program said, "People don't want blood served with their eggs and bacon in their morning paper." Which also goes to say that it's not commercially viable content. Yet if papers had run more of the last photo in the past as a cautionary example, perhaps there'd be no foolhardy steamgirls set atop body chewing coupling rods and meat grinding train wheels, much less drivers trying to beat trains at crossings, or kids playing on tracks, with consistently fatal results.

And perhaps having to write this essay addresses a larger and more disconcerting problem in steampunk culture: That most have come to value an aesthetic shellac of thin brass paint and cogslappery over an actual participatory maker ethos. That we've perhaps forgotten the original manifestos of imagination made real, the desire to transform the world into one of our own choosing, and maybe this is also an unfortunate creative gap that requires minding lest the engine of the superculture we're commenting on runs over us in the end.

Steampunks & everyone else:
Don't muck about on trains.
Make what you want in the world to change it.
Mind the fucking gap.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

then I coloured with Prince at a cafe.

Just before waking, we saw Prince Rogers Nelson alone at a cafe table adjacent to ours. He looked completely dejected, looking at but looking through the butcher paper and crayons strewn across its surface. Abstract clouds of light blue and bolts of purple graced the white. We got up, walked over, and said, "Hey. We're going to join you," and we grabbed a few crayons, adding to the pastel sky abstractions he'd already laid down. He looked annoyed, but in that same expression, more glad that we'd broken his ennui and come along. Then I woke up.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

the boombox of loves lost.

Depeche Mode's Black Celebration album goes on the repeat, rescuing me from work. 1986. I'm in the front hall of Tucson High Magnet School, and someone has this tape on a boombox. Me, Angie, Lando Ettrick, Leah, Dee Dee, sitting around a pillar, Swatches, K-Swiss, Benettons, pretty as a picture, we're together but alone, no talking, just listening, shoulders touching. There's a stretch of "Sometimes", then "A Question of Lust", and by "Here Is the House" and "World Full of Nothing", we're weeping, weeping uncontrollably, each of us thinking of someone we no longer have, and can never have again. The tape clicks and stops, and we look at each other, knowing, and go home.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

Dark Entries returns to The Red Room podcast.

We have the distinction of being a repeat guest on the Ruminations From The Red Room podcast! This time Mitch has 100% truth in advertising with the focus being on Twin Peaks: The Return's (a.k.a. Season 3) first four episodes.

Listen to us here.

Mitch's blurb summary:

Mitch and Guillermo don't dissect, or deconstruct in this episode of From The Red Room. It's two long-time fans, taking in the first sights, and sounds of an adventure both familiar, and new. So much to come, and we'll dig deeper as we get our footing. Just glad to back in those big, majestic pines.

Predictably we loved it, but of course this raises all the whys & hows involved in that love. And there was even something in it we didn't actually love, but you'll have to listen to find out. Plus what Lynch creation isn't worth comparing & contrasting notes on to try and divine the secrets behind his darkly glassed world?

[We love that Nicole LaLiberte more than faux dop-Coop.]

There are points where I relate Dale Cooper to Sigurd of Saga of the Völsungs, and utter the inspired phrase "playground of charm" three different times. These moments alone make our dialogue brilliant, but also tune in & subscribe for my host's irrepressible sincerity & persona that makes his podcast a cut above the internet itself.

[The So Fine Ladies of the Double RR Diner!]

Stay tuned as Dark Entries will likely equinox otherworldly space again on Ruminations From The Red Room after the next installment of Twin Peaks: The Return!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

NorsePlay: I invented the warhammer clamp.

In the Norse Lore, Thor has the convenience of a warhammer which, thanks to dwarven craftsmanship, reduces in size to fit in his pocket or be worn as a pendant (yes, anyone wearing a Mjölnir necklace could be that Odinson among us, so watch yourself). Yet, short of some atomic-chain matter folding nano-technology, bearing a warhammer for the rest of us tends to be rather cumbersome.

Many have stated that necessity is the mother of invention, or argued that war is the father of innovation. The medieval warhammer was invented as an anti-armor weapon, something that crushes & claws into plate steel. Aside from keeping this weapon in hand, or tucking it into your belt, there historically was no other easier method of carry. But why hadn't those knights & soldiers who'd worn a scabbard or quiver on their backs thought of something similar for their warhammer?

Five-hundred years later, Guillermo the IVth finally invents the warhammer clamp, adding his name to the Valhalla-worthy warriors of melee weaponry's historical innovations.

[The warhammer in clamp! And me in my wedding tunic!]

[Grabbing the haft for draw.]

[Drawing the warhammer.]

[Swinging over-the-shoulder for the strike!]

Mark that game changer on your calendars.

It started as a going-to-sleep exercise. I'd lie there and think of how exactly one could wear a warhammer on their back for a quick over-the-shoulder draw, and also be able to snap it back in place once done pounding your attacker into submission. Sometimes I'd slip into a dream thinking about it. Other nights, the mental exercise would cause my eyes to snap open, and instead I'd run for my desk to draft something out. As a writer, you learn that if you don't put an idea down when it comes, you will lose it, and I applied that preserving sensibility to this process.

[Warhammer dimensions.]

My awesome high finish warhammer from +Sabersmith Inc has a hammered/scalloped haft, which is advantageous for grip, but presented a challenge for a clamp. The first two PVC pipes I dremeled into what would've been working shapes for a standard smooth handle finally worked on my third attempt, which had higher ends for holding an irregular surface, a scoop in the middle for flexibility to allow for a draw, and curved outsides to prevent scratches & not get caught when the hammer was drawn/replaced.

I then drilled & mounted the clamp onto a T-shaped plastic sheet reclaimed from two pieces of old computer keyboard that I Gorilla Glue'd together.

The next problem was the width of the head versus the smaller diameter of the handle while mounted. I'd thought the plastic backing would just flex and curve down for the wider head when clamped, but no, it required immersion in boiling water to soften and reshape into a specifically angled spatula to allow for the warhammer's head. (Thanks to my prop-making friend +Tory Middlebrooks for this helpful tip.)

[Note the finished spatula shape, and the judicious use of Gorilla Glue between the layers, which requires some restraint & predictive skills as it expands to four times its volume when dry.]

With the hardware of it crafted, I then had to learn some basic sewing (since I took Spanish in both junior high & high school and not Home Ec.). Making a pattern, acquiring a yard of nice faux leather upholstery, and some high gauge waxed thread, I cut a front, back, and baldric loop. The front pleather required some careful assessing of how wide to make the slot to slip over the clamp portion. Before the first part of the stitching, I used Gorilla Glue to seal the edges of the loop. Using a ruler & a white gel pen, I then measured & marked the holes, punched them with a bookmaking awl I had, and did a double running stitch for the baldric loop on the back piece, then whipstitched around the outside halves after first Gorilla Glue-ing them down & together to the plastic hardware.

[The finished back with a loop for the baldric to run through. The loop had to be long for a solid mount of the "T" on one's back, otherwise it might twist and the clamp wouldn't release when one needed it to.]

[The front side with warhammer in place.]

Making a pattern of the finished tube clamp, I cut a sheet of adhesive backed black felt to cover it (see above and the third photo in this post for detail) and protect the hammer from scratches, then added one thin strip of adhesive backed foam rubber for extra grip on the four top insides of the clamp to prevent slippage while in states of excessive motion (i.e. jogging, running, rappelling, or horseback).

[With baldric belt running through the back.]

Sometimes in older issues of Marvel's Thor, we see him with the hammer's handle peeking out over his shoulder, but we never get to see the scabbard-like hardware as the head's always under the red cape, so the artist never actually had to present a working solution like this one.

[View from the front with accessible handle over the shoulder.]

[The last thing you might see before getting sent to Hel.]

I'm no engineer, so this project was challenging for me. I'd get super angry when things didn't come together the first time, as I'd spent alot of time thinking and re-thinking possibilities, trolling hardware store aisles, considering so many materials, looking at textiles, weighing the idea of maybe using rivets or grommets, and playing with the options over & over in my head, yet still buying things that didn't work or I didn't need. It wasn't like writing where the tools & words are superfamiliar and it feels like play at times -- this was strange & rather like work.

I felt maybe this was a small taste of what Sindri & Brokkr felt when making Mjölnir, the vision of knowing what you want to make but putting in all the effort into figuring out exactly how to make it as the horsefly of doubt & setbacks tries to break your concentration. It turned out to be three times what I thought it would be in costs & time, but it was worth persevering on until the victory of invention. I'm glad the plastic dust is out of my lungs and kitchen, and I can now carry my warhammer hands free and always at the ready.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Dark Entries meets Ruminations From The Red Room.

A few weeks ago we had the honour of being a guest on Ruminations From The Red Room, a newly launched podcast of my longtime friend Mitch Proctor.

Listen to us here.

While the title implies that Mitch's online project is Twin Peaks-centric, that's merely a context and starting point for a leaping-off into dialogues about what underlies existence, the vagaries of values, and an interpersonal think-tank of ideas, which is broadly ambitious & admirable.

Remember that conversation you had with someone late one night where everything you said made sense and was possibly the most profound thing that ever came out of your mouth? This podcast is an attempt to capture that magic, that essence of conversational synchronicity where speaker and listener learn & build upon each other, and a palace of reason is constructed. Mitch has a slightly more humble explanation of purpose, but we believe he's after something more transcendent in the end.

[A CG update of The Red Room. (from imgur)]

And like Coop & Windom Earle in the room above, we dugpas crossed the threshold into his ritual space studio and a twenty-year-old friendship spellwove a Q & A web about individual inequality, the creative process & impulse, fandom, this blog, garmonbozia, and the endurance of our long connection. Or as Mitch's blurb text puts it:

Mutual respect, youthful idealism, Mr. Lynch, and Mr. Smith ignite a friendship that has two decades under its belt. Here, we touch on some of that origin, and drink deeply of love of art, and expression. Twin Peaks, will modern audiences get it? How does Thor carry his hammer on his back? Will we ever get the follow up to 4:13 Dream?

On a side note, Mitch courteously brewed us a cup of Valhalla Java: Odinforce Blend to fuel the conversation. Not only did it do that, but drinking a single cup at 8pm catapulted me into a wakeful night,
purged & wrung my insides out, and violently penetrated every cell of my body. Would I drink it again? Hel yes! Willingly, and Odin would approve of pursuing such an ecstatic experience.

Elixirs aside, Mitch managed to keep me mostly positive and on the trackless track, like a good host and interviewer. We both had alot of nice & sincere things to say about each other, culture, being genii locorum of Tucson, the feels, and wild shots in the dark at the upcoming mystery that'll be Twin Peaks.

So if you readers have always wondered what I really sound like, and exactly what that blog on the laugh's truly about, give the podcast a listen, and if you like it, do subscribe as there's more Dark Entries meets Ruminations From The Red Room to come.

[It's all about Shelly the Waitress' cherry pie.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

it was a Chupacabra.

With a 13-megapixel camera on my BlackBerry, one might think I'd've gotten a crisper capture than this one that looks like the thousands of questionable blurry paranormal sightings photos where if you squint right you kinda, sorta see it.

And just like those hazy photos of sasquatches, ghosts, and unidentified flying objects, I just barely got this:

I'm not a photographer, I'm a writer. You can definitely tell from this and from most of the other self-provided photos I've posted. So here's the writing to back this up:

On Sunday, March 19th, 2017 at 2:24p, my mother-in-law Joyce and my wife Michelle, beckon me over to the kitchen window at my parents' house. Outside my mother has a rock island xeriscaped garden which includes a very small fountain and pool that the local wildlife comes to nibble and drink at. The house is located on the slope of Tucson's local landmark, "A" Mountain, which puts it near a large area of desert park, so animals wandering through are common enough.

This was not a normal animal.

When I got to the window, a medium-sized hairless quadruped with blue skin, maybe a few shades darker than a painted Hindu god, was lapping up water from the pool. It had a uniform blue skin colour, no birthmark blotches like on most hairless dogs, or random remaining tufts of hair like on dogs with mange.

The other most likely suspect in Tucson would be a coyote, whom often scavenge edibles from suburban trashbins and random litter. I grew up in the northwestern outskirts of Tucson in the 1970s on a 3-acre desert lot, where I saw hundreds of coyotes, and it was many a night their yipping choruses and howls woke a young boy up, so I know a coyote when I spot one. This was not a coyote.

Unlike the photo, my first glimpse was plain as day, through a clear glass window, a mere 35 feet away. Neither Michelle or Joyce had a cameraphone on them, so I turned and went to the other side of the kitchen to get mine. In the short time that took, the chupacabra began to walk away north, our line of sight passing to the screened part of the window, which is the moire/grainy texture you're seeing in the image above. I tried moving to another window to get another shot, but I barely saw it leaving the driveway, so that's the only picture.

The above is fact. What follows from here forward are my thoughts, cryptid comparisons, and my associative speculations.

You may ask if it was a goatsucker, why wasn't it instead busy drinking blood? While my parents might live near a big swatch of desert, they're still in the city not so far from downtown, and rural farm animals aren't common in their neighborhood. Also, it was a rather warm day, and the chupacabra was probably very thirsty from all the sun. They're not undead, despite the hemophagic similarities, so like any living thing, it needs water to live. Other animals do come there to drink, so it may have been stalking before deciding to go for the water.

My sighting & photo capture matches the ones seen by Dr. Phylis Canion, a rancher in Cuero, TX, who had the xenomorphic body in her freezer, and after some inexact DNA testing (semi-concluded as a wolf-coyote hybrid), had the remains taxidermied, which exhibits some distinct anatomical variants upon closer examination.

A long time ago, my sixth-grade teacher, Mr Ramon Martinez, a very wise man, took a moment in class to bring up the 1972 B-film "Gargoyles". The premise included the idea that a winged humanoid species underwent a long-term hibernation under a mountain, emerging long after the accounts of their appearances had been dismissed (which is probably where the "Jeepers Creepers" films got their premise, and possibly inspired "The Descent" films partly as well). Then Ramon said that his mother once witnessed a group of winged humanoids launch themselves from "A" Mountain.

[Sentinel Peak, more commonly known as "A" Mountain.]

This account begs the questions: Why did the University of Arizona stop quarrying rock on conveniently located "A" Mountain? And aren't there tunnels going from the U of A, to Tucson High, to Roskruge Bilingual School, to possibly elsewhere? My wife once went through a tunnel system extending from behind Park Place to the McDonald's east of the mall and across the street, which has many, many branches leading to gods know where.

If there's a little-known subterranean network under the Tucson valley, why couldn't there be a population of chupacabras somewhere under the mountains concealed in a vaulted den? And if what's called the "Texas Blue Dog" variety of chupacabra could live there, why couldn't the related Puerto Riqueno & South American humanoid chupacabra spotted by my teacher's mother in the 1960s share the same Svartalfheimian space?

People have carved out shrines on the hard to reach upper southern face of "A" Mountain, risking life & limb to make small alcoves with statues of the Virgen de Guadalupe. It seems more than a little trouble to show religious dedication on a steep mountainside as opposed to a more easily constructed yard/bathtub shrine, unless there are perhaps other protective/warding reasons to pick this particular mountain.

In 2014, this oddity was captured in Texas. While it doesn't match dimensions or posture of the creature I saw, this curious variation only expands the types of chupacabra.

Many are the accounts of Huldrefolk, the hidden people, living within the hollow hills. Trolls, kobolds, alfar, dwarves, landvættir. There's a persistence to the idea.

If you allow the possibility of species of things yet to be discovered in the rainforest canopies, or in a darker corner of the Mariana Trench, or surviving from prehistoric times on a South American tepui, then anything could be down there underground. Anything. Realize that our credulous perception of the world is a fragile thing, mutable, and subject to change & expansion. 

There's room enough in the world for some, or even many, monsters. You don't have to believe my very real picture. It's grainy, far from definitive, only backed up by three witnesses, but I offer its evident truth to you with these words.

I know what I saw.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him viaLinkedIn or G+.