And then I found myself saying: "I've been to the Isle of Dogs; I saw no dogs."

And then I found myself saying:

"I've been to the Isle of Dogs;

I saw no dogs."

your baby is an obsolete resource sucking idea.

After watching Ron Howard's cinematic adaptation of Dan Brown's Inferno just before seeing Marvel Entertainment's Avengers: Infinity War, we noticed that goals of both antagonists was immediate elimination of half the population of the planet/universe to save it. We also have memories of The Alex Jones Channel's documentary Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement which mentioned an odd monument, The Georgia Guidestones, which states as its first guideline:

"1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."

David Icke posits that Hollywood has a way of preparing humanity via entertainment, himself citing the use of advanced aliens in cinema for a reveal of the ancient cabal of reptilians who he believes secretly runs the world.

I'm not saying these two prominent conspiracy theorists along with these two popcorn films have any connections with each other, or an agenda to introduce the idea of population control, but it makes you reflect on this problem. The population needs controlling, or we should terraform Mars sooner than later, especially when we're going reverse engineer cancer cells to extend our lifespans, or achieve transhuman singularity to become immortal.

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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.

and this is why Buddy's hip-hop name is Lil' Teef.

In the musical production of domestic tracks, I re-rhyme songs to integrate his name in my completely unacceptable vocals for our mutual amusement, and at night I listen to the low sub-bass loop of his steady deep breaths that lulls me to sleep like someone singing. It's a fair trade. Still, at some point he's going to chime in and rhyme back using full words. I can see it in his eyes.

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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 in the comments below.

they traveled from afar to see me.

Hails to Dani Thomas, Vincent Enlund, Jeremy Hehn, Patrícia Rohwedder, & Analise for coming all the way down to Tucson to check on me and offer their face-to-face Heathenry. Maybe that's my personal Luck at work, maybe that's their sense of Honor & Right Action to counsel going above & beyond geographical & emotional distance, but I'm grateful to have such sterling people in my corner. Thanks for making the awesome mead available, the gift of the wooden combi-goat, and your combined Wisdom. My Hospitality's always open to you all. Much love.

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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.

my Dad's in a jar.

My Mom brought him home, and I went to look.

"My Dad's in a jar," I said aloud.
The horror of that.
My Dad's in a jar!, I thought.
The fascination of that.

It was both at the same time.
It has resolved into the latter in being able to hold the totality of him in my arms, talking to the man he both once was and now is, the trade of human frailty for the strength of bronze & brass, a consolation of permanence, and presence, once again.

[Dad's view. He gets the length & breadth of the valley. He would often look at cars on the freeway and muse as to who they were and where they'd been and where they were going, the fingers of his mind reaching across the miles for their stories. I suspect he now enjoys knowing them all.]

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For my Father.

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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 where of Neverwhere.

During what was an acceptably charming BBC miniseries in 1996, author Neil Gaiman kept a notebook with him, wherein he decided that all the efforts happening on behalf of his commissioned screenplay deserved a matching novel, and so he wrote Neverwhere.

With the property also being adapted into a graphic novel & BBC radio drama, some half-born rumors that it's going to be movied for the big screen, and Gaiman's announcement in February last year of an in-progress sequel book, such narrative endurance again proves Gaiman is one of our foremost our modern mythographers.

Neverwhere taps into the persistent idea that there's another more fascinating reality below the conscious universe that reflects our unconscious in all its imagination and desire, beneath the skin and bone, the thought under the thought. It's the truth behind that nagging feeling of the apparent world versus the essential.

[Tucked to the side of a vagrant haunted Tucson underpass, this installation was enchanted by a sinister elder-styled script with the key "The Door Opens Inward". Photo credit to myself during a dog walk one very dark night.]

Preceeding Neverwhere in this city below concept is Arthur Machen's The London Adventure (citations from the 1924 Knopf hardback):

"... and that fancy is infinitely more impress than fact, partaking, as it does, not of actuality but reality." p.48 

"But I think something happened; that the doors were opened; that the human spirit came into momentary contact with worlds which it is not meant to visit." p.82-83 

"Strangeness which is the essence of beauty is the essence of truth, and the essence of the world. I have often felt that; when the ascent of a long hill brought me to the summit of an undiscovered height in London; and I looked down on a new land." p.152

Like a master storyteller, it's Gaiman's oh-so-proper English style and completely in-passing delivery that gives the tale its voice. It comes off so easy & winning, which is a testament to the forethought and craft behind the work. The following citations from the pagination of the first U.S. edition hardback prove this:

"He continued, slowly, by a process of osmosis and white knowledge (which is like white noise, only more useful), to comprehend the city". p.9 

"A click: the sound of a switchblade opening, empty and lonely and dark." p.19 

"She looked at him rather sadly, like a mother trying to explain to an infant that yes this flame was hot, too. All flames were hot. Trust her, please." p.75

"Then he flexed his fingers, put the pennywhistle to his lips, and began to play an odd, rollicking tune that leapt and twisted and sang. It made Richard feel as if he were thirteen years old again, listening to the Top Twenty on his best friend's transistor radio at school during lunch hour, back when pop music had mattered as it only can in your early teenage years: the marquis's reel was everything he had ever wanted to hear in a song ..." p.125 

"But now, in her dream, that is not happening. Instead, the weasel is reaching out a forepaw toward her, and she is dropping her throwing stick and taking its paw. And then and there, in the undercity beneath Bangkok, they are dancing together, in one intricate unending dance: and Hunter is watching from outside herself, and she is admiring the elaborate movements they make as they move, tail and legs and arms and fingers and eyes and hair all tumbling and twisting powerfully and strangely into the underneath and out across forever." p.192 

"'How old are you?' asked Door. Richard was pleased she had asked; he never would have dared. 'As old as my tongue,' said Hunter, primly, 'and a little older than my teeth.'" p.201

[The Chair of Mysteries sits at the end of a street. One feels as if someone might materialize there when the planes shift and the worlds touch. Found & photographed by myself during another fearless dog walk into a neighborhood no one should live in.]

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the Tucson Steampunk Society's book club meeting for this urban fantasy favourite, which only liminally has some shared subgenre points with steampunk. I hadn't expected it to be livecast & recorded, but I'm glad the TSS got to show off its literary taste & acumen, myself included.

Watch it here.

I enter off camera at 47:37, get asked about my social credentials & am begged to runway model walk my Dark Librarian apron for the Monster Rangers at 51:00, cite the book's most intense moment 1:00:49 with a clever roller-coaster metaphor, orate my perception of the use of mythic time and parallel ideas at 1:16:11, and questioned if would I go to London Below at 1:19:16, which is yes, obviously.


Looking forward to The Seven Sisters, wherein the tale of Neverwhere is continued. 

[TSS is doing Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age next month, so if you've got serious brilliances to say about this Nanopunk original, do come.]

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11/2018 Addenda: The above pictures have since changed. The Chair of Mysteries has left its nexus point and is missing, and the City of Tucson has misguidedly used our tax dollars to paint over "The Door Opens Inward" label but not the actual graffiti in that same underpass. 

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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+.

my Dad died today in a room with buttercream walls.

My Dad died today in a room with buttercream walls.

There's a retelling of the moment where Odin gets swallowed by the wolf described as suddenly all the magic everywhere disappears and color just drains from the worlds.

It is like that.

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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.

You. Me. Us.

Dim Sum. Is She Going? Phone Numbers. Adult Games. Past Date Red Wine. Sexy Candles. Jenga Victory. Study Dates. STD Testing. One Month Later. Viking Metal. Black Metal. Russian Tea. Sailor Jupiter. Postcards. True Love. Oyster Dip. Egg-What-Not. Moving In. Talking Dogs. First Simultaneous Proposal. Bear Tooth Rings. Whole Pig. Irish Shoes. Red Tunic. Fumacabra. Oathmaking. Wifeband. Hoseband. The Mistress. Doctor Buddy. Nurse Lola. Coder Woof. Booley Crocket. Slow Cooker. I Broke It. Destiny. Dogpocalypse. Reading Together. Morning Menudo. Mattress Topper. Smartbone. Cold, Chilly, Chilly. Mountain Fortress. Dissing My Mom. Admiring Your Parents. Kale. Quilting. Pierogi. Backyard Treasure. Backdoor Treasure. Animal Style. Silver. Skip-Bo. Sidecar. Driving Lessons. Fountain Pens. Glitter Ink. Poultices. Molcajete. Chipotle Relish. Grilled Meats. Chiparonies. Moar Coffee. La Fresita. Dwarf Elf Goblin Canine Fellowship. Non-Existent Fun List. Dragoon Quad. Iron John’s. Sherlock Binges. Tea Eggs. Inappropriate Cardgame. Teaching Sux. Stoney Baloney. Another Bath. Wild Garlic Grill. The Abomination. Why Have A Kid When You Can Have a Dog? Brat Nieces. Brahmi For Your Mammie. Curative Phở. Elric Is Metal. Twin Peaks. Chocolate Torts. The Good Oak. The Queen of Cheeses. Odd Germany. Nasty. Laphroaig. Monster Camp. Ooooh Charcuterie. Cast Iron. Breakfast for Dinner. Back Dimples. Chemistry Is The Secrets of the Universe. Vichi Naked. Barrel Of Kimchi. TNG Boxset. Dark Tower. Mom's Cyberknee. Dying Again Father. Good Son. Caring Daughter. Five A Night. Loving Wife. Loving Husband. Desire. You. Me. Us.

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For Michelle.

the storm drain looked back at us.

Two nights ago, my dog & I walked past a storm drain on 15th St, just southeast of 6th Ave. A pair of oversized burning amber eyes stared out at us set slightly further apart than humanly normal. After going a quarter block away, I thought wait, should I go back and investigate? Then I figured if it reached out and got me, what would happen to the dog? Or if it grabbed the dog instead, then I would have to descend into the tunnels to rescue or avenge him, probably against superior numbers. We kept walking. Heather, veteran of many more horror movies than I, said we definitely made the right choice, but now I'll always wonder about it.

[For more Tucson underground weirdness, check out this longer blog.]

earning Valhalla.

Went to the park to battle some strangers. Took a foam sword to my left eye and a ball-tipped arrow to my right. On top of my two semesters of fencing at university, I'm putting these deaths in my Valhalla bank.

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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.