Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Dear Friends,

Tonight's little visual ditty from a public domain image: "Metropolis", 1927.



Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Sunday, December 15, 2013

My Electric Lady…

Dear Friends,



This evening's little doodle from some public domain art of unknown origin. It's pretty raggedy, as am I as I prepare to careen into slumber and dreams.


Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Dear Friends,

My assistant, that rancid and untrustworthy bastard snuck into my lab after hours. He mixed up my chemicals. Come swiftly, now, with the antidote, Nurse Ratchid!

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

S


And yet again…

Dear Friends,

They came again to my fevered dreams. Strange but familiar.

Hic Finis Est

S


Tuesday, November 26, 2013

They came again…

Dear Friends,

They came again in dreams, dancing on unseen strings gyred to an invisible Puppet Master's dexterous digits. The music resolved this time from a noise akin to the crinkling of waxed paper sheathing shards of glass and sand.

Hic Finis Est,

S

Monday, November 25, 2013

A Visitor in Dreams…

Dear Friends,

A visitor arrived in dreams last night. It did not speak, but behind my eyelids, between my ears, somewhere in the vicinity of my brain's Hippocampus, there was a buzzing. It slowly resolved into music and emotions unspoken. I cannot recall what it all meant.

Hic Finis Est,

S

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Strange David

Strange David

S. Solomon ©2013


I got mugged a few weeks ago. A shadow in the alley put out my lights. I came to just before dawn. My head hurt. My shirt, wallet and right shoe were missing. When I tried to stand up I promptly keeled over. My left lower leg and my entire foot did not seem to belong to me. Trying to stand again produced the same result as before. Then two cops come strolling along.

They asked me my name and what had happened to leave me sans shirt and one shoe as I sat in the dirt by the shrubs. I related my best recollection of the mugging. I told the cops that my leg and balance were out of order and asked for an ambulance. First, they needed to write a report. Five minutes or so later, they did summon an ambulance and I was soon lifted onto a gurney, wheeled over to the vehicle and thence transported to the nearest hospital.

Two weeks later I was moved to a facility for physical therapy; the goal was to restore the nerve that travels from the side of my left calf to my ankle. The exercises and electrical stimulation sort of worked,; just a little. Nonetheless, my balance restored with the help of a leg brace, the insurance company determined that I was too ambulatory to require the medical ministrations, bed and meals provided by the good folks of Meager Estates; Your Interest Is Our Top Priority. Thus, I am now convalescing in an assisted care place, a log cabin in the woods of western New England where people who are mainly very old go to smoke cigarettes on the porch and eat a lot of red meat and potatoes before the hearse comes to carry away their mortal shroud once finally, indisputably shorn of all vitality. 

Not all the folks here at Terminal Meadows; Nestled in a Tranquil Setting, are elderly. I’m not.  The Other Steve, the World’s Greatest Authority, is not. He just yammers on about any topic that floats through his cratered consciousness to grab his focus for a few seconds before he fritters into a confusion of random words on subjects ranging from the sex lives of mollusks to The Truth About the Kennedy Assassinations. But, everybody else is old is except one other guy. He is the real and most intriguing subject of this little literary explateration. He is Strange David.

Strange David is deaf, mute and schizophrenic. So, of course, he is unable to really participate in conversation nor relate to others the messages spoken by the silent voices beamed into his skull by unnamable phantoms hiding in moonbeams and cracks in the pavement. His continence is typically stone like. Even in repose, his brow remains unflinchingly furrowed and the corners of his crusty lips static, as though they were carved into a grimace. He is trapped behind a visage that only expresses bewildered horror.

Strange David sleeps fully clothed and in a fetal position on the floor by his bedroom door. He keeps the light on and his eyes open through the dark hours. He rises at dawn for the first of his dozen cups of coffee. His primary mode of communication is nodding his head. One can, however, reliably get a reaction from him by coming around a corner or walking up from behind into range of his innate proximity sensor. That range is about two feet and his response to the sudden alert is to leap from his toes as though they were spring loaded. Strange David can reach a height of about twelve inches straight up when he’s good and startled.

Yet, he never blinks. He never smiles. Well, he almost never smiles. Over the course of my first two weeks in his company, I only once saw him look me in the eye and then flash a wisp of a smile as transient as a single beat in a racing heart. We were eating breakfast across from each other at the common table. As usual each morning at 8:10AM, Strange David stared into his big bowl of Cheerios® as he swiftly slurped overburdened spoonfuls of milk, plenty of sugar, and bleached and artificially colored, pre-masticated, compressed gruel into his resolutely frowning maw.

Then, for no obvious reason, he looked up at me, milk dripping over his chin. He flashed that brief, thin smile before it disappeared. It was like watching a glistening, soft seeming pebble stolen from sight by a black wave’s exhausted crest. Strange David instantly bowed his head again to gaze unblinking into, perhaps through, the white puddle and bobbing bits of kid’s cereal beneath the soggy, grizzled vanishing point of his jaw. He held his big spoon clenched still and upright in his fist as though a weapon or a torch light.

Thus, normal programming on the Strange David channel resumed and remains uninterrupted. The smile proved to be a one-off, like a never repeated deep space message from a sentient race living in the empty, cold gloom around the dying ember of a very distant star. The meaning of the message can never be decoded nor even inferred. Some things must remain mysteries. Some things may only happen once.

Hic Finis Est,

S

Sunday, September 15, 2013


The following is a brief bit of typically thoughtful prose composed in the aftermath of accidental comedy that was my nation's most recent Presidential election. Ah, the Mystery that is Democracy! As giggles subsided into gasps echoing down the bleak halls of recent history, I turned my literary attention to a true crisis in our time.
Yours in Confabulation, S. 2012

Cannabis Deprivation

Today, we have a President who has boldly sort'a proclaimed that he sort'a, kind'a smoked, uh, well, er, pot, actually choom or boo, in a time when our children need to hear this message. The ravages of Cannabis Depravation among our youth, particularly young, white males, is leading to a scourge of bad music and even physical deformities. The Lawrence Stanley Denton Foundation has well documented the instances of shrinking Hilarity Glands and overactive production of Seriousity neurotransmitters in the brains of weed starved kids. Another effect of the syndrome is formerly luxurious blond locks of hair turning white and falling out in clumps from the pates of previously handsome fellows in their late teens to early twenties.

In the most severe cases the Mary Jane malnourished are known to spontaneously grow wingtip shoes that cover their webbed feet, sprout uncomfortable worsted wool from their bodies in the form of poorly fitting and itchy suits and their faces blossom with horn-rimmed glasses that encrust their dilated eyes. They can eventually can be found prowling the streets of suburbia for days at a time accosting strangers with pleas that innocent, horrified citizens buy insurance from them. No. No. This is no joking matter. Yes. Yes. As the Revered St. Zimmerman said: "Everybody must get stoned!"

Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the immensity of the tragedy of Cannabis Deprivation Syndrome. Take the impact on just one community, Lavatown, NV. Once a thriving small city of suburban tracts surrounding the principle employer, The Lawrence Stanley Denton LavaLamp Factory, it is now a virtual ghost town. In the interest of full disclosure, The LSD estate endowed the research provided in this monogram through the good works of the Lawrence Stanley Denton Foundation, created as some small amends for the tragic proceeds of his cultural and financial empire and personal, willful abandonment of sanity while violating every law of god and man.

In any case, Lavatown, is largely abandoned. The LSD LavaLamp factory is shuttered and decaying, inhabited only by murders of crows and colonies of rabid bats that eat rampant beetles as big as small cars and gnaw on the skulls of hairless rats as large as cats. The streets of the once fair city are empty but for the clumps of white hair blowing like tumble weed in the desert wind. All of the grown ups have moved on, leaving their tidy homes for the safe shelter of dumpsters in Reno. They had no choice, of course. Their children were quite mad, prowling the streets with mom’s Pyrex mixing cups, knocking on doors that would never be answered, pleading “May I have a cup of choom? Will you buy insurance? Please vote for Willard “Mitt” Romney.”

In the early days of this catastrophe, The Centers for Unease Control (CfUC) proposed dumping large quantities of bong water into the local reservoir. The Bong Water Association, a major lobbying group, opposed this action and Congress refused to authorize Federal Agents to seize bongs except in the case of a Member of Congress of the opposing party getting caught actually huffing down a choker of kind bud. Thus, once again, our legislators found themselves in deadlock and reconciled to permit orgies in the offices of Senators with seniority to continue unabated, untaxed, and without interruption. However, it was stipulated that no more than three grams of the finest Peruvian cocaine, six magnums of expensive champagne, and four Thai trannies would be delivered between normal business hours (every ten minutes during two hour breaks between 1:PM and 4:PM). Otherwise, all the coke, hookers and booze was fine. But, no pot! “We have to draw the line somewhere!” proclaimed Senator Comedentures (R-AZ).

So, the CFuC turned to Plan B. Without explicit authorization, out of desperation, the Foggers, helicopter born bombs of a super-double-secret mixture of MDMA, 2Cb, and NO2 were deployed over the entire D. C. area. Alas, the only thing accomplished toward staunching the advance of the plague of Zombie Insurance Kids for Romney was the melting of their already quashed egos. Yes, already lacking any self-esteem or self-regard, the ego loss had no effect. The brave folks who executed this extraordinary and perilous mission did, however, come home to giggle quite a lot and hug everybody.

On September 12, 2012, Secret President of The World, Cheney V.4x, was informed of the unsanctioned and failed mission that he had sanctioned. He then made the most difficult decision of his life since he had to figure out if he wanted pickle relish on his hot dog, and mustard as well as ketchup. He ordered the “nukeyurl bombin’ of Lamptown.” “Do Belize, too. I’m sick of those whiners and I don’t care if they’re bilingual. I am too. Si, comprendo par lez voose!?!”; he continued. “Oh, do New York City, too! Pronto!!! Enough with that Jew bastard Mayor. Don’t tell Obama that Bloomass and The City are smoke. You don’t have to. Okay! You’ve got your fuckin’ orders.”

Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds after the order went out to Secret Military Command, fourteen million souls were no more casting a shadow upon liberty and All that is Right. Of those relieved of their corporeal baggage were some four-thousand and sixteen zombified Insurance and Romney election workers. A grateful nation bowed its head into a pile of radioactive ashes raining from a dark sky to give thanks to The Secret President and good riddance to Belize, that odious City of New York, its Jew bastard three-term Mayor, and noisy kids who smoked flowers.

Hic Finis Est, © Solomon 5/26/2012

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Secrets and Riddles

Dear Friends,

True Secrets cannot be told, but they are delivered in a case of steel and barbed wire and must first be known by the Strange Teller who cannot answer your own question delivered to you by seeming accident. Answers to such riddles cannot be solved, but only known. No answers can be delivered by any sage, demigod nor tutor. Real Secrets can only be known and their answers earned. The answers, should they arrive, are only for you, you.

Hic Finis Est,

S


Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Another little doodle…

Dear Friends,

Ran across this bit of mask making riffing off of an old image in the public domain. Had a little fun with it.


SCS ©2013

Monday, June 17, 2013

More Visual Noodling…

Dear Friends,

Here is another bit of noodling with a public domain image from perhaps the finest piece of silent film plucked out of a genre that was just being first explored in cinema back in the 1920s.

SCS ©

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Steam Punk Motor Bike!

Dear Friends,

A slight fiddle with a public domain image of a steam powered motor bike from early in the last century. It must have been quite a ride.


SCS


Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Another Old Buddy…

Dear Friends,

Another old buddy stopped by.


He is considered quite a looker on his Home World.

©SCS

Friday, June 7, 2013

My Rescue!

Dear Friends,


A recent transmission from my Home World. I am being hailed to stand by for further instructions.

I Remains Yours in Infradibity,

SCS

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

More Whimsey From Across the Heavens

Dear Friends,

This little bit of fiddling from a public domain image continues a recent theme. Look to the sky. Be bewildered and question. Why have THEY not yet arrived, or have they? Are they too small to see? Do THEY live in a timeframe out of our own?


Is a moment to we Humans comparable to eons for such creatures. Perhaps they are in no hurry to deal with such an infant civilization as our own. Perhaps they know that we are trouble brewing for them, and want to stay hidden. Perhaps THEY are so big that we actually live inside their beings, as bacteria and viri live in our own Human bodies. There are so many possibilities. The questions are fascinating.

Hic Finis Est,

SCS

Saturday, June 1, 2013

The Mother Ship!!!

Dear Friends,

The Mother Ship has now arrived! Thus, now is a good day to be alive, my Comrades and we rejoice. Spill  down your gullets the Philuphian Ale and feast on the roasted loins of the Barsoomer Galumpher. So, ho-ho, we are off to the Home World, Adelphious.


One problems, however. We need with the getting to Luna, Moon of Earth. Some small imprecision in planning and trajectory by Central Command and the Mother Ship is a quarter million miles away on a cold or hot (depends on the sun), barren lump of stones. Fermenshup, can you get that old Apollo spaceship out of the Smithsonian? Grummphtr, we need a rocket. Off to Huntsville for you! Bring pliers and bolt cutters. The Pink Stalk Walkers have their damn giant bomb tied down like somebody was going to steal it from the freakin' lawn. Whatever. Let's get a move on!!!

In Hasty Departure, I Remain Yours,

SCS

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Our Religious Counselor, Razputine…

Dear Friends,

A guest has come to stay vid us to with to look after the children and the Tsarina. Please now to welcome Monk Razputine. Bring him now with the tea, servants. He likes a little bit of the Wodka in the brew. Oh, oh, also now he is with the live herring and the candied toenail clippings in the brew. Vhat!?! He now vants with a plates of pickled sausage served by Marina, that pert little hussie, dressed only in saucy red neglige. 




Can we instead just have this man shot, shot again, stabbed, poisoned, stomped and dumped in to the freezing Moskva RiverVhat? I'm the freakin' Tsar! Get this nincompoop nannie out of the house. Do it now!!!

SCS ©2013

Friday, May 24, 2013

More Digital Manipulation…

Dear Friends,

Another manipulation of a Public Domain photo of one of the most terrifying heroes of my childhood. Can you guess who this fellow is?


I remain yours, as always, with one foot into The Twilight Zone,

SCS ©2013

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Terrapin Station…

Dear Friends,

Another old doodle. Kai Tools for the effects and an ancient Mac. 1989? Oh, a dose of The Mighty Grateful Dead.

SCS ©



Friday, May 10, 2013

Kesey and Company

Dear Friends,

Here's an old photo of an old friend many of us will recognize. He's sitting with his daughter? Niece? Granddaughter? I don't know, but it is likely something that floated without credit from the family to the 'Net. It's been slightly retouched with digits, but the essential spirit it conveys is, I think, intact.
Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Monday, May 6, 2013

Alan Turing…

Dear Friends,

This cat basically invented what we now call computing. He had some help from a notable Lady, named Ada Lovelace and several other folks going back to the 1800s, but Alan Turing pretty well put the cherry on top of the sundae in the midst of WW2. In so doing he might have saved the world from Fascism. His payment for such cleverness and heroism was to be chemically castrated for the crime of making love with another man.

He committed suicide. He felt unrecognized and did not like the fact that he was growing breasts. He ate a bite of an apple laced with cyanide and went unrecognized for decades due to the secrecy attached to his pioneering work. He is a hero of mine. As my fingers fly over these keys to telecommunicate with you, I am thinking of the gentleman who laid the rails for our present digital railroad.

Oh, and he really liked stories like "Snow White". He was a sublime cryptographer. Might there have been a secret message in the half eaten apple left on his desk by his open books of notes?


Hic Finis Est,

SCS

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Dear Friends,

Eureka! At last Humanity has created the Left-Handed Monkey Wrench!


SCS © 2013

Wednesday, March 6, 2013



Dear Friends,

My beloved is not by nature a vindictive woman nor violent. However, like many conscious and contentious citizens of our American Republic, she and I are both repulsed and called to action by members of the Republican party, many candidates for state or federal office. We cannot deafen our ears to their insistence on such principles as a pregnancy born of rape is God’s gift and that a victim of rape should have just gotten over it and enjoyed that sparkling moment enthralled in the embrace of her attacker. Thus, we came up with a practical plan to re-educate the thugs who counsel such notions. It goes something like this.

First you lash the bastard to an old chair with the cane removed from the seat. Use twisted barbed wire as the constraint. Next gag the idiot with duct tape. This works best if the moron has a mustache (more on this in a moment). Get that big, rusty monkey wrench out of the tool chest and clamp his nose. Clinch it real tight and let it dangle from his ruddy proboscis. Next pull out the razor knife and slash to remove his trousers and shorts. Do this slowly and careful-like; we don’t want to damage our volunteer. Now, we need the vice grips. These are good for the head of the penis, the center of the candidate’s thinking. Wind the tension screw tight to choke off any immoral thoughts.

The groaning subject of this ethical instruction will then be allowed a period of relaxation as he watches my beloved macramé a tidy but capacious sack for his scrotal area. This will only take two or three hours as he weeps and shudders. Once the handcrafted appurtenance is ready, it will be filled with steamy, hot mud and tied securely around his unmentionables. Now, simply wait for the estimable pubic figure to swoon and faint before ripping off the duct tape along with his well groomed mustache and perhaps most of his lips. This will rouse the student from his revery. At this point, you inquire, “What it as good for you as it was for me?”

Presently, we’re not sure what to do with our earnest student. We’ve already violated every local, state and federal law, as well as every law of God and man. We can’t have him blowing the whistle on us, so we staple his tongue to what’s left of his lips and take away the whistle. We leave the door to the shack out in the woods open in hopes that raccoons or feral dogs will consume the soon to be corpse. Hope springs eternal.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Dick Cheney on Gun Safety & Regulation!?!



Dear Friends,

Now, let me get this straight. Dick Cheney is today the commentator on Faux News discussing issues of gun safety and the regulation of fire arms in our nation.

Okay, here we got a guy who got so blind drunk that he fumbled on the #1 rule of fire arms safety: one never points a shot gun at the face of anybody whose head you don’t mean to splatter. Cheney did just that and he fired. He almost killed the guy, one of his best hunting buddies and an old friend. Fortunately, Cheney’s hunting partner was only disfigured for life. No charges were pressed against the Vice President as his pal apologized publicly for getting in the way of a muzzle two feet in front of his shit-for-brains skull as an intoxicated man within a heart beat of having his own atom bombs flipped off the safety and pulled the trigger to blast away.

No big deal. Things were settled in an amiable, gentlemanly manner. Perhaps some money had to change hands, but we will never know. Of course, at the time of the near fatal shooting Cheney had already hijacked the Presidential administration of a half-witted fellow draft dodger to start two pointless and doomed wars and set the stage for WW3 with North Korea, South Korea, Israel, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Syria, China, my nation and all the NATO powers in that game. Nice piece of work and a tad more tricky than just blasting your friend in the face at point blank range with bird shot. That was small beans and of no lasting consequence.

Anyhow, Dick then retired from government work to pluck the heart from a dead man and have it plugged into his own rancid plumbing to resume his earnest efforts in defense of lunatics with terrifying weapons of mass murder and his inane, drug induced ramblings about the threats to our citizens’ safety perpetrated by neighbors with weapons of mass destruction that require us to own more weapons of mass destruction so we can be safe from lunatics possessing weapons of mass murder.

This all makes total sense. Well, if you buy the illogic of Faux News, it makes sense. Um, can we get the government provided heart of the dead guy back? We’d also like to be reimbursed on the federally provided surgery that saved your mendacious, cold gutted and shambling, undead corpse from the grave. Thank you, Former Vice President, Dick Cheney.

Well, it's often tough to look at the fat in the fryer, to see how it boils down to the gristle and grit. Somethings can seem complex when they are actually simple, I fear. We have to talk plainly and reasonably to our friends and neighbors, but pull no punches. What's going on in our nation would horrify our founders and most sensible folks today.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Guys…



Dear Friends,

In cleaning out my digital desk drawer I ran across these recent posts to G+ and Facebook over the past week. They are disconnected but also sort of thematically related, or at least similar in tone. I have taken some care to edit and expand them where required.

This first post is in response to a lady’s opinion about males and their worthiness for affection and admiration. She was talking about actors on the silver screen.

I'm pretty sure that there are only two guys that most guys with any sense of being a good guy, but a real guy, that any guy would emulate… Sean Connery and Carey Grant. I think that Grant takes top honors. Thanks for the lessons in guyness, Archie! Oh, Gary Cooper also makes the list. Almost forgot him.

Next, I stumbled back over this post in response to a fellow who felt he’d taken as much guff as women take online for the being male or female. I’ve had my share of bad weirdness in conversations between the sexes, but have not noticed that women are as apt to be as rude and domineering as men online. I felt that the guy that I responded to was whining and just plain wrong.

I've sort'a sat on this topic for a bit, but have to respond to K. Our male shoulders are wider, our voices are deeper and we've got the leverage in both the physical and social arena as males. I'm sporting a couple of nice scars and a broken thumb from dealing with crank-drenched freak trying to rape a little woman and then kill me. Fine. Let the women hurl angry words at you along with the spice of shame. I think they've earned a certain privilege in that arena. It's what little leverage they typically have where it comes to male to female confrontation amongst us big brained naked Great Apes. Let them have at it while we try to listen to the message behind the sputtering anger. Screw it. I'd rather sleep safe in the arms of an angry lady that might forgive me when the sun comes up than sleep alone and lonely.

Then the topic of our inborn natures as men, women and individuals popped up in another to and fro.

I think I was born under a bad sign and marked from the day that I was born. Still, we are very plastic in our natures and proclivities. I was blessed with clever, tolerant parents and thus was nurtured to live beyond that selfish, mean spirited, puking and pooping being that I was created. I somehow became a more tolerable individual. I, at 57 years old, have not pooped in my diapers in months, seldom vomit on my bib, do not (sometimes to the dismay of my spouse) fondle a woman's breast at every opportunity, and I'll actually share with others (if there's something in it for me). Now, I was born with an apparently innate understanding of gambling. That is why I seldom play games.

You don't gamble without controlling the odds and never, ever, under any circumstances at any time bet against yourself. I haven't been in but two physical altercations and have the busted nose and a fancy scar above my left eye to show for that. So, I stay out of fights other than verbal jousts where the dignity of a female that I am trying to woo is at peril.

Okay, so the last time I did so, I got that fancy scar and a concussion and the girl left me on the pavement as she moved on with the other guy. Right. Whatever. I still do lie when I have to. "No, Officer, I do not recognize anybody in this line up. May I go before you let that big guy with the Ace Bandage® on his hand out of his cage?" Yes. This watch was a gift from my grandmother and I have an alibi. You can't prove anything. Um, can you spare a couple of bucks, maybe five until I get to the, uh, money machine? I'm good for it. Really. Okay. Two bucks?

Thence I moved on to physics and lawyers and experimental space craft hidden in secret bunkers under a mountain in correspondence with the same woman as the post before. She has now really provoked my imagination, though not in the way you are likely imagining.

Well, Ms Smarty Pants, if that's your real name, I know some people who know some people who probably know your people but my people's people have their own UFOs and their own ray guns. Why, one of them youfoes is hovering right along side my castle floating in the sky at this very moment in time. So, just watch yer step, Missy. You don't want to tangle with a passel of lawyers from The Secret World who are so hungry that they'll work for $2.83/hr.

Those seven legged buzzards in bad suits, brief cases over stuffed with briefs (incontinence is a typical challenge for deep space/near-luminal travels in anti-gravity vessels) know something about something and they'll tell you what! Oh, crap!!! I think I just hit the button for the Chemtrail Evacuators instead of the Space/Time Dilator. Dang! I'm stretching into an infinitely long line drawn from an infinitesimally small point in the future, present and past. Okay. Okay. It's all perpendicular from here. I'll be fine.

Somewhat back on track, the conversation turns to a mutually admired old fellow, a fine player of the mandolin. His name is Grisman and he is a good man. He is certainly no Grant, Connery nor Cooper. He’s actually pretty homely. But, he does know well how to make the women smile and swirl. Thus, I shall add him to my honor roll of guys who know how to work their racket and do it right. I wrote this after listening to some of the fine old-timey tunes that he created new but sounds like they’d always been with us. That is a rare talent that few along the line are capable of. There was Garcia, Robert Hunter and just a few others that came up out of the fifties to make brand new old music. Of those, only Hunter and Grisman remain to stomp this tera in their considered way.

Yeah. I figure most of us earn every sparkle of silver and each scar as we shuffle on. Still, dang, that Grisman fellah can still play a good game of "Catch Me if You Can" on his little music box. The notes drizzle sugar water and flower petals here and then gone into silence. He gets done with them and then they only exist 'tween our ears. In that way, it's a simple project that he has undertaken for goin' on six decades. Yup, the guy seems to have figured out why he was put here on our pale blue dot that spins like a dust mote in the vastiness of Eternity.

So, that’s it. My digital drawer is all cleaned out for this week.

Hic Finis Est,

SCS

Monday, January 14, 2013




Dear Friends,

I’m trying a little experiment in self publishing an eBook as a PDF viewable on any mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop web browser. Anyhow, here’s the deal. See the following rundown of the book, a short novel of about ninety pages in print that mashes together hard science fiction with fantasy and mythology. If the following description intrigues you, ask for a digital copy and send your email address. If you get a giggle or perhaps a little insight from it, USPS a check to the address below for the amount of $8.99 or whatever you deem appropriate.

It’s the gleeful story is set in a gloom-benighted future where Earth is a dimly remembered myth, now a sterilized cinder reeling out of a most distant spiral arm of its home galaxy. In this present, Humanity is no more that a collection of cultured genes amalgamated with those of other species; they no more than weeds, melded to components of nano-machines and synthetic life-forms. Our hero, if you can call him that, is a haploid male born of no mother. His name is Saurian LUX. Saurian is a contraband runner caught up in a conspiracy that will either destroy or rescue the galaxy in the face of a perhaps implacable force known as The Flux.

Saurian’s love interest, APES2CB, possesses exceptional emotional intelligence and physical dexterity, as well as photosynthetic, glistening skin. She has several irises in her engineered eyes and can see her lover’s heart beat as well as exploding gamma ray bursts in the great heavens. She is likely doomed. The two are made for adventure and born for trouble.

Yes, the plot is also full of booby hatches in time and space providing for unlimited sequels, prequels, a movie franchise, television series and video games.

I am at S. Solomon, 20 Hampton Ave, Suite #315, Northampton, MA, 01060. My email is ssolxy@gmail.com. Just ask and you’ll find that PDF in your in box.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

SCS

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Compulsive Writing?



Dear Friends,

I’ve been thinking a bit about my compulsive writing. If I didn’t write each day, I think I could not understand myself nor others. I might be diagnosed as somewhere on the autistic spectrum. Whatever.

My incessant writing is something like self-therapy. It puts into play feedback loops from my external world of experience and my internal world of desires and imagination. There are loops in loops in the process of writing; basic neurology. They strengthen and inform each other and drop their output into my mind and those of others at the end of the production line that vanishes yet continually reappears at the dawn.

It is also an escape from the external world. For some moments at a time I dwell only in my mind and some precious notions delivered by other writers. I find rhymes in my mind that syncopate with experience. My thoughts dance. I know something that I had not imagined before. Words bring those notions to form and my synapses and dendrites swirl with them.

Writing is also a meditation. I can go into the Sanctum Sanctorum within my skull.

Writing is a discipline that requires concentration; a commodity much undervalued in this world. Focus is a blessing and a curse, but there it is.

Writing is the Dragon in the Dark Cave. Head on in. That Dragon favors a writer not as a meal but a companion well equipped to tell a bed time story.

Hic Finis Est,

SCS