Do You Dare Enter• The Columns Graveyard?
The Columns-Keeper
Hee, hee, hee! GREETINGS BOYS AND GHOULS! It•s my favorite day of the year, HALLOWEEN, and that can only mean one thing • it•s time for an EXCRUCIATING EXCURSION into the TERRIFYING COLUMNS GRAVEYARD! Can you hear the WHINING WIND whipping through THE COLUMNS GRAVEYARD, whispering ZUZUVISION, ZUZUVISION, JOIN US• It•s a sound that does this OLD FIEND•S heart good. Hee, hee! But enough idle COFFIN CHATTER, let me introduce myself. This is your SHRIEK-CHEF, your DELERIUM-DIETICIAN, THE COLUMNS-KEEPER, ready with a bubbling cauldron filled with my latest REEKING RECIPE. You•ll need it, to fortify you for the QUEASY QUEST ahead of us! There•s nowhere else to run, MY PRETTY, for it•s time for you to enter the ROTTING RECESSES of the COLUMNS GRAVEYARD! Hee, hee!
Now which key opens that GHASTLY GATE? DAMN!
“graveyard”
R.I.P. The Confusing Mysteries of Hell
It’s me again in ICKY ITALICS! What a place to start, eh kids? HELL! That•s right. Hell according to one ISAAC AIRBOURNE, that is. Isaac started off innocently enough, banging on about the EERIE EPCOTT CENTER, enough to get me in a cold sweat•
The International Showcase or whatever they call it pissed me off and ruined my evening, along with the gay (not meaning homosexual, just gay, as Chris Higgins uses the word) parade that started up when I was trying to leave the park. Those drummers can go and jump in a lake, with all their posing and face-making, pretending they’re having fun in those goofy suits. You could never pay me enough to do that shit. “But Isaac, it’s for the little kids!” I don’t give a shit, you should never lie to little kids like that. What is the point? One day they’ll be 14 and disillusioned and not trusting adults for lying to them for so many years. Drummers at Epcot don’t have fun doing that stupid dancing and making faces, I don’t care what anybody says, and all little kids should know this.
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But a few columns later, the strain started to show on ICY ISAAC. He•d wander around the Columns office like he•d seen a GHOST. Imagine that? These were his FINAL FEARSOME words, on the subject of George W. Bush, before he disappeared forever. OOOOOOO.
I’ve seen junior on TV and in video clips on the net, and he’s unbelievably boring and evil. Where the hell do they find guys like this? OK, so you want me to justify why I think he’s evil? For one thing, I’ve never heard of the guy and he wants to be my leader all of the sudden. His dad led us to die for oil in the early nineties and he never even admitted to it or apologized. “I wanna be just like my dad.” Well, fine. If this guy gets in, don’t be surprised if we end up running around with masks on in the video game called “Gulf War Syndrome” in the sandbox some time soon.
R.I.P. Isaac • Remember that it•s best to keep MUMMY, er MUM, about politics! Hee, hee! Let•s move on the next CACOPHONOUS CRYPT! Well look here, it•s•
R.I.P. El Mortigi Tempo
TIME•S UP, more like! Say it in ESPERANTO, say it in DEATHSPERANTO, but Mortigi Tempo was destined for an UNTIMELY END, from the beginning•
If dreams do not come true, and are indeed figments of our imagination, then why do we have them? And what explains people whose dreams do come true? If dreams do come true, then I would have been dead a long time ago and I would have been a successful doctor and a world famous musician. But at the same time, events that I experienced in the dreams became a reality. Would one classify dreams as being real or unreal? What if we live in unreality and dreams are the only route, or rather, the window of opportunity to experience reality? What if the universe we know doesn’t exist? What if we don’t exist and what if time and space are concepts that do not exist? If this is the case, then fools are we for living in ignorance. Fools are we for failing to recognize reality. I have always wondered if my life and the experiences I went through were real? What if I was an infant who was in a coma and had somehow created this universe and world I live in my mind? What if I wake up from my coma and find myself in the body of a ten-year-old and I have this long life ahead of me?
MORBID MORTIGI TEMPO presented one long SPINE-TINGLING STORY ARC, which never really finished. Here is the LAST LETHAL excerpt.
I am sure than many people encounter interesting personalities throughout their lifetimes, but only a few stick out. I remember sitting in the pub that night, drinking my Guinness, and watching Z ramble on mercilessly to L and a crowd of drunken laborers about rising up and “fucking management up the arse.” It was quite a sight to see, and I had had my hopes of seeing Z as the next CIA or MI5 casualty. Alas, the money grabbed ahold of Z and with that grasp, my ambitions and dreams of a better world and future died. I don’t fault the route in life Z took. A part of him died when his father passed away, and Z’s perspective of the world changed. He quit his job at Thom’s record store, broke up with L, and decided that he wanted to sleep with a whore and become ordinary and real to our senses.
Fare thee well, MORTIGI TEMPO! Incidentally, FREAKS, I hear that you can find MORTIGI TEMPO during full moons, banging his head against a wall, in TERRIFYING TAMPA, FLORIDA. And let•s face it, living in TAMPA is indeed a fate worse than DEATH! Hee, hee! Come on CHILDREN, we•re so near the end now. Keep going. Who•s in this COFFIN?
R.I.P. Truth or Consequences
FATAL CONSEQUENCES, more like! Choke!
Need I validate my position today that the whale was and is a tidal wave? Certainly not. Many of you will read Moby Dick with a passion you’ve not known because you are prepared to be surprised. How infrequently we are surprised anymore. The first kiss, the first job, the first dollar earned, the first time you recognize that you are not the center of the universe – these firsts infrequently propagate the joy that is surprise. Call me a realist, if you dare. Call me a sensualist. A genius, if you will let such words part from your moist lips. Those lips. Ahhh, I must sit down. Won’t you help me get my breath? Push the hair out of my eyes, this unbrushed gray and black mop of hair that is slowly creeping up my forehead as if retreating. Do not retreat. I beg thee, retreat not. Language must be mastered. I’ve been published. Published! Dammit, hold me.
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POOR STEVEN GARNETT!! He too met a HORRID FATE when he got MARRIED last summer! Yessir, that CERTAINLY is• well• CHILLING• and• maybe sorta nice really• um• SPIDERS AND SNAKES! BONES AND BLOOD! Hee, hee! Whew• Jesus, this shtick is hard. Now who could be in this OLD TOMB?
R.I.P. Unknown Florida
Well, well, well. It•s DEATHLY DAVE MITCHELL! A prolific cartoonist turned chronicler of the BLOODY BACK-ROADS and paths-less-traveled in and around CENTRAL FLORIDA! BOO CENTRAL FLORIDA! DISNEY BOO! Let•s listen to the words of ghosts•
I’ve used up a few bytes here in the past to decry the vanishment of the sleazy old Florida roadside attraction, but I’ve given a lot of thought lately to the similar disappearance of the little community landmarks, especially here in the Greater Orlando Tri-County Tourist Axis. A couple of imminent closures of places as familiar as the ol’ hand-back especially: Ben White Raceway and Tinker Field. The former is a city-owned quarter-horse training facility of national renown that may soon be closed due to steady financial losses. The latter has been allowed to slide into disrepair and, with the move in 2000 to the Disney baseball facility by the AA Orlando Rays, will likely be razed to provide parking for football fans attending games at the neighboring Citrus Bowl. Both sites have quite a bit of history: Ben White has trained scores of champion horses, and actually hosted an early NASCAR Grand National event. There has been pro baseball on Tinker Field’s site since the teens. The Cubs, Dodgers, Senators and Twins all held spring training there, and future stars from Rod Carew and Frank Viola to Chuck Knoblauch and Kerry Wood honed their craft in the minors there. It’s where I became a baseball junkie, so I obviously have a lot of sentiment tied to it, much like one loves a stinky old dog who’s no longer the adorable puppy of years past.
DAVE•S last report was filed from the PRESIDENT•S HALL OF FAME at the intersection of SR 50 and US 27. CANNIBALISTIC COLONIAL!
I don’t know how long the Presidents Hall of Fame has shared a parking lot with the Citrus Tower. My earliest recollection of it, in its original incarnation as the Presidents Wax Museum, dates back to the mid-seventies, so perhaps it was a response to the Bicentennial, or maybe a Hall of Presidents rip-off (There were a few seventies attractions that tried to mimic specific Disney rides. I recall a pseudo-Pirates of the Caribbean place across the street from Busch Gardens in Tampa that must have been keelhauled by Disney’s lawyers). Whatever the case, I suspect it wasn’t around in the sixties or my parents, who were very keen on attractions that promoted History and Patriotism, would have taken us there at least once. Whenever I’ve gone to visit Citrus Tower in the last decade or so, the Hall has been closed with no signage to let you know why or when to expect it to be open. You can imagine my excitement when, on my most recent trip to the intersection of SR 50 and US 27, I saw people going in!
Oh, DEATHLY DAVE• you•ve got to be more careful in the backwoods of Florida. I hear a DELICIOUS RUMBLING RUMOUR that his RAVAGED REMAINS are buried under the MONUMENT OF STATES in KISSIMMEE. Say it ain•t so! Then who•s in his PINE BOX?
No time to play CALL THE CADAVER, we have to move on to the last stop on our WHIRLWIND GRAVEYARD TOUR!
R.I.P. Wednesday Again
POOR SPECIAL ED. He was a FRESH-FACED young man who immediately upped sticks and moved to NOCTURNAL NEW YORK CITY from Florida after being hired to COLUMNS. Was it something we said? New York City caused our boy ED to become UTTERLY UNHINGED IN SHORT ORDER. Read on.
This is quite more fucking difficult than I remember it. Seeing as how the Author hasn’t done one single bit of intellect-enhancing work over the past six months of quiet time – and factoring in all of the perfectly good brain cells destroyed by White-Out (which is supposed to come in handy when you’re a ‘writer’ – though I can’t see why when all I do is white out portions of my computer monitor and get high) and weed – I’m having a tiny bit of trouble actually spitting this out. (Also – attempting to watch Tommy and understand it and write is slowly but surely killing me.)
No it wasn•t TOMMY that did Special Ed in. Though TOMMY is a TANTALISING TORMENT to inflict on ANY(DEAD)BODY! THIS below was the last message posted by OUR OWN SPECIAL ED, before, presumably, that baby alligator he had so carelessly thrown into the toilet years ago, surfaced again, fully grown and DEVOURED HIM! AND HE•S FROM FLORIDA! Get it! It•s an IRONIC TWIST ENDING! The Columns-Keeper doesn•t mind telling you that he•s finding this tour rather strenuous•
5.29.01
When does political activism become… just annoying?
But you see, my FINE-FEATHERED FIENDS, the SCARY STORY doesn•t end here! Though SPECIAL ED is long gone• there is lots of SPOOKY ACTIVITY even yet at the Wednesday Again site. Cryptic discussion board messages scream from BEYOND THE GRAVE, stories APPEAR AND DISAPPEAR • somebody call an EXORCIST!
CLANK!
It’s so DREADFULLY hard to shut that gate…
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Well, you•re still here? The COLUMNS GHOSTS AND GOBLINS didn•t steal you away? Oh well, BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME! In any case, I do hope you enjoyed this TERRIBLE TOUR of the COLUMNS GRAVEYARD. Remember to stop by every so often and lie a ROTTING WREATH on their tombstones! See that half-finished grave over there• makes my heart LEAP WITH JOY to see that someone else will be joining me soon. BLADEJOB, MAYBE? Hmmmm. This has been your gracious GORY host, the COLUMNS-KEEPER, reminding you to visit columns.ink19.com and WISHING YOU A HAPPY AND HELLISH HALLOWEEN! ◼
