Temporary Ordinary

This is sort of an extension of Burning Bridges. One of the lines takes from a riddle given to Bilbo Baggins by Gollum in the chapter Riddles In The Dark from The Hobbit. Another takes cue from the song Meat by Poppy. 

Immortal improbability:

A monumental morgue,

Even if hidden under rubble

or the sea

To infinity

Into nothing

Earth will be engulfed,

Entropy eats up everything,

Even the bursting black hole gamma beams

All crumbles,

Time minces bone and grinds mountains down

Old or new, what is learned is gone after high noon

Like meat minced between teeth, too much too soon

Acid eating it away

A carcass consuming then gone all the same

Plugged into life support machinery;

Misery and joy—

All ordinary is temporary:

Hoping as much as loathing a possible repeat

Continued Criticisms: The Not-So Dark Side Of The 90s

I've continued watching the documentary series Dark Side Of The 90s from Vice and through that had continuous criticisms in my mind. Maybe not to the same degree as with the Talk Shows episode it started off with in giving information that is ostensibly incorrect in the historical lineage to modern politics from the era of turbulent trashy tabloid combat TV, but still absurd enough that my brain has this tick in it going, 'well, that doesn't seem so dark, or accurate;' as well as just flat out overall things incoherent to my brain. So, in having finished through the fourth episode of the first season out of three; this is what I have to say on episodes two, three and four.

Episode 2: The Viper Room: Hollywood's Sanctuary

This second episode surrounds a Los Angeles venue in the 1990s that was bought and ran by Johnny Depp. In that it kept with and as it's told had almost 924 Gilman air to it, there wasn't a more posh attitude to it and in spite of a celebrity owner kept an eclectic variety of acts and attendees throughout its time under his thumb: from burlesque to grunge and talks with Hunter S. Thompson, it had everything. 

What is the focal point of this overview how it is the spot which River Phoenix died on the doorsteps of after taking a drink that was possibly spiked then collapsing. As the story goes, the young man was prone to drug usage when he was in the city of LA and the autopsy report following the incident detailed to have found cocaine, heroin and morphine in his system at the time of his death. Now, that isn't to say he wasn't also served a spiked cocktail, but that seems a fancy excuse for what was otherwise a drug addict, the same as those who try obfuscating that from Kurt Cobain's story. On some level it is a typical tale of adolescent actors and odd upbringings from a cult background, similar to Rose McGowan as she told in her book Brave. Simultaneously and like Cobain however, this youthful stardom is the reason why his death is as much a spectacle as the films he acted in and life was. It's not as if a drug overdose in LA was an abnormal or crazy thing; even in a low point during the early years of the 1990s and spiking back up again following his death and continuing so through the decade. 

Episode 3: TV For Teens

This one is by far the most intriguing so far; however makes the an error over and over again, in spite of rejecting that narrative from the start, where those speaking make the claim the shows they made could never be made in the current day, or the days of 2021 specifically. As if South Park hasn't been on the screen for almost 30 years now, or It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia doesn't pull the strings humorously of every taboo these series can get their hands on. 

According to those interviewed as part of this epoch, who had been actors on these series, the point of these series was to talk to the realities of the youth as opposed to gilded gleams of sanitised life. Yet all was trivial, nothing expressed was anything that couldn't be portrayed today; whether people would tune in, depends on how well it is portrayed and if the creators can understand talking to as different from talking down on. But, it's the "generation" bashing that goes on ad-infinum. 

Now, I can understand personally having a distaste for such directed media, but from all around eras rather than just the one I exist in, with little exception. For example of that exception, I'll always love Malcolm In The Middle, the first 20 years or so of The Simpsons and original 21 Jump Street series; but even in that none of these spoke or speak to me beyond entertainment. The realities depicted and animated don't speak to me in those as modern depictions of younger lives never have and I find much of it still gilded nonetheless; hence why my real affinity goes towards something like Kevin Smith's excellent depiction of my own lived reality in Clerks and Mallrats, even prior to living that life.

Episode 4: Beanie Babies Go Bust

Obviously the topic is the title. In this and like the last episode, there's nothing dark aside typical rich tax fraud. I'm really not sure there's much of a 'dark side' to the lot of these beyond selective judgement. But in delving into the creation of eBay, where it could be really dark by most people's standards is the burgeoning of true crime memorabilia— 'murderbilia'— on the platform that was eventually banned as a result of people like Andy Kahn. But the episode is focused on the craze around a commercialized commodity, an event not uncommon by any means, or terribly dark.

Down the Rabbit Hole & Over The Rainbow

OAUG Research Notes

There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a bottle on it ("which was certainly not there before," said Alice), and tied around the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words "DRINK ME" beautifully printed on it in large letters.
It was all very well to say "Drink Me," but wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. "No, I'll look first," she said, " and see whether it's marked 'poison' or not"; for she had read several stories about children who had got burnt, eaten up by wild beasts, and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules her friends had taught her...
However, this bottle was not marked "poison," so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice... she very soon finished it off.
[...]
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up that she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden.

Soon her eye fell on a little glass box that was lying under the table: she opened it, and found a very small cake, on which the words "EAT ME" were beautifully marked in currents.
[...]
So she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.

The bottle shrank Alice down to less than a foot while the cake grew her incredibly tall— 9 feet, to which she only shrank again as a result of tears.

I think there's some connection here in a few areas: the rabbit hole is like the tornado in the Wizard of Oz as in Carrol's book it leads to Wonderland just as the natural disaster brings Dorothy to the land of Oz. To the point of poison then, it's somewhat akin to The NeverEnding Story II.

Where this comes into Marilyn Manson is mostly twofold; as One Assassination Under God has been likened as 'Eat Me, Drink Me fully realized', an album characteristically based on the story of Alice In Wonderland mixed with Nabikov's Lolita, sort of similar to the 1976 pornographic adaptation of Lewis Carrol's books Alice In Wonderland - An X-Rated Fantasy, with the added elements of vampirism and high ends of low in obsessive love and loss; but in regards to the Wizard Of Oz there's the allusions to the story in the title track of Chapter One with, "just monkey's will be left to fly," and then the poppy field imagery in the music video for the lead single As Sick As The Secrets Within. 

The key to the garden's tiny door, maybe sort of similar to the beginning lines of Lucifer's Teardrop on Chapter Two, though that would seem to harken back more to Deep Six from The Pale Emperor... At the same time however, it's also a song (Lucifer's Teardrop) that could be seen in the lense of Oz, a trickster like those characters focused on in the Portrait Of An American Family era. Lucifer is somewhat likened or analagous to Loki, a trickster entity from a certain perspective of viewing these Satans...

Some Conclusions and Further Consideration for more research

Now having finished reading Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, my theory of a parallel to the Wizard of Oz has been proven correct in a certain regard: at the end of Lewis Carrol's first glimpse of this fantastical world of nonsensical logic and overarching card deck royalty, Alice is awoken from this by her sister and it was all merely a dream. This is similar to (at least the film adaptation of) the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is whisked away to this merry old land of Oz in this tornado, and after an exciting adventure finds her way home to awaken in bed from this dream, having bumped her head during the ordeal of the natural disaster...

Now, I probably should reread the Wizard Of Oz as it's been about a decade since I last went through the pages of that book; I think it was in fifth grade I last did so. But as of now, I will read the second part of Alice's story in Through The Looking-Glass... the title reminds me now of the movie Arthur And The Invisibles.

The pile of books beside by bed shrinks.

Turbulent Talk Shows

I began watching a docuseries from Vice called Dark Side Of The 90s where in its opening episode the topic covered is that of outrageous talk shows like Oprah, Geraldo, Sally Jesse Raphael and most notably on all given accounts being that of The Jerry Springer Show; with the explanation that the only one to really predate this style of tabloid trash TV being Phil Donahue. Now, I can buy into that to a certain degree and understand this series is about the 1990s, however it's a travesty and incorrect to say that Phil Donahue was where credit is due here and that would go to the Father of Combat TV and his Hot Seat: Wally George.

Wally George was the archetypal layout for all of those sensational shouting matches between the host and guests, and including the audience in the racket in the inflammatory interactions. The end of the first episode of the Dark Side Of The 90s makes this even more apparent in his legacy in pointing that this style of television evolved into reality TV that eventually lead to both the 2016 and 2024 US presidential election turnouts with Donald J. Trump's victory in both instances— spoken to in a more derogatory manner than the talk shows and as if The Apprentice star's rise to political prominence was that of some exclusive phenomenon; when Ronald Reagan was also a silver screen star with a somewhat similar flare to Trump in the debates leading to their elections. 

Nonetheless in diagnosing this phenomenon Nikolas Schreck seems to nail it on the head and in a 2013 article he gave the explanation that: 

It was like [Wally] was a microcosm of Hollywood taking over politics. In a way, it could seem harmless or like it was just a joke, but when we were actually in the studio, and Wally was presenting me as a scapegoat for all societal ills . . . the audience was whipped into a genuine frenzy. They did not take it as a joke, and it felt very dangerous to be there. It's easy to think that he was a humorous phenomenon, but it was part of the whole. There was a very violent craziness to the '80s that I don't think Americans can remember exactly how it was. I went to a Ronald Reagan rally in 1984, and I sensed that same inherent violence. You know the novel Lord of the Flies? It reminded me of that.

Schreck was on Wally George's Hot Seat a couple of times, as well as appearing on his radio show for his gothic death rock project Radio Werewolf and in a more recent podcast episode of Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michaels from January 2025 noted that while Wally cemented this archetype for the shows that came about in the 1990s, he was also to a certain extent predated even in that with Joe Pyne. The difference being with the two however was Wally was more idealogical and akin to that style of combat content which grew Ben Shapiro or the now late Charlie Kirk into prominency. It wasn't for some level of deep political thinking or analysis that such was or is popular, but like with Reagan or Trump, in their catch phrases and one-liner insults. 

With that emphasis then that these pieces of tabloid television being what evolved into the expressly disliked president, it seems then that the real reason of excluding George was one in the same: the label of conservative. That being said however and as Schreck expresses in the podcast, it's hard to fully characterise either as being so conservative, and more like snake oil salesmen and showbiz figures. They put on a spectacle and make a good buck off the dupes stupid enough to buy into it; as that would seem almost symptomatic to the American population broadly in this vapidity. 

Evolving from this style and in the more intermediary period of decades, and aside reality TV, came about other similar styles of media. On major networks there were shows like Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, also transmutating into the shock jock style that came into abroad with Howard Stern which then laid inspiration for the first podcasts like Three Ring Radio; that then leading into the Joe Rogan Experience and the landscape seen accumulated now 40 years after Wally George began.

Stained Grass

This is a short poem somewhat inspired by the lyrics of Marilyn Manson's song Don't Answer The Door. 

This is only a game under stained grass

Frayed bombshell bunker for laymen

Picturesque in frozen frame

Stagnant in time, sinuses bleeding out in real-time

Tears unheard while screaming in vain rhyme schemes

Cruel Concessions

This poem serves as an extension of The Gifts of Emotion and Cruelty. It is not an answer by any means, in either piece of writing; merely observation and exploration. 

Cruelty, hedonistic calamity

Sweet sadistic gift,

Suicidal malignity

Succinct in lasting grief and confused clarity;

Truculent remnants of barbarity,

Severe within mindfully meditated savagery;

Vicious curiosity spoon-fed as eye candy—

Merciless malevolence:

Not necessarily a killing spree;

Fell, foul ferocity—

This is only a game don't you see?

Colosseum cattiness just a car crash—

Scarring intentional incidents and unintended tragedy;

"Off with her head," a royal Red Queen decrees,

Senseless while sensual, who is the enemy?

Satisfaction in cannibalistically inflicted misery:

Emotional enmity guaranteed?

A Small Glimpse Into My OAUG Analysis Study

I have six total pages of notes on the title track for One Assassination Under God alone from the last day now. I think I've got the ultimate analysis brewing; plus the recent addition of You Can't Die Young as an expanded edition to the songs on Chapter 2 now raises the era to totalling 20 songs, as I also include the cover of In The Air Tonight-- not so much As Sick As The Secrets Of (Sleep) though as it's merely a remix of As Sick As The Secrets Within. I'm also considering putting God Is A Weapon, the collaboration with Falling In Reverse, in with it as well seeing as it was made and released within this timeframe and Manson's part in it, while echoing Ronnie Radke's, also seems to sing to other numbers like Meet Me In Purgatory and Enantiomorph...

Under God, Understood by Marilyn Manson

This is just a small fraction of what I have in regards to the title track, One Assassination Under God.

"Some of the inspiration when I was writing the words to this was drawn from a collection I had started building up of images that I identified with. There were a lot of Caravaggio paintings and others of that era, depicting various types of beheadings, executions of all sorts, firing squads. There was one illustration I saw where a horse was tied to each limb of the person they were killing and it ripped the person apart when the horses were set free. There was another one in which a person was sewn into a live animal and then it was set free to run off of a cliff. That one was really disturbing and for whatever reason I really identified with that one. One thing that I did notice though when I was looking at all these images is that it seemed to me that it was less about justice for the crowds of people involved in these things. It was more about the desire to see blood and to see suffering."

Judith Beheading Holofernes, Caravaggio, 1598

Dramatic, cinematic, militaristic as well as melancholic encapsulation of moments past, present and future. Assassination. Assassin-Nation. A nation of assassins. 

I have a bunch more, as I said many pages of notes beyond; this merely serving as a bit of an archive or a teaser to show a bit of it all, sort of like I did with the Unalive notes; but as I already know, in total so far I have much more than anyone else so far and I'm keeping it relatively on the hush beyond much vague alliteration here and there; as it makes more sense altogether, but I can certainly leave clues about some clues can't I. Needless to say with that then, boy-o she's a sain't like Jackie-O. 

The Gifts of Emotion and Cruelty

"Emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself."

— Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal s1e6 

This quoted is explained over dinner to an off-duty FBI official Jack Crawford and his wife Bella, to her passive aggressive protests against the dishes prepared by a psychiatric consultant and expert cook Hannibal Lecter for the matter of their inclusion of meat in the dishes he was serving them that evening, insinuating that the methods of obtaining such was more barbarous in acquirement than need be for sustenance to relish. It's an interesting way of phrasing the matter seeing it is an undeniable observation that humans are sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all, though simultaneously not the only animal observed to take what can be characterised as delight in sadistic enactments with other creatures. Dolphins do such with the blowfish, playing and puffing them up then puncturing the sea animal to inhale the potent chemical produced in their inflation, to the effect of what would seem a sort of narcotic; cats toy with their prey, both so as to tire it out as well as in that the performance delivers pleasure chemicals even beyond the simple idea of hunting— it's fun. 

Where this label of cruelty on other animals is dubious is that it's a projected prescription of human attributes onto other species and assuming they're of the same intent; even if the chemical rewards and actions are likenable. It's ascribing a rhyme and reason, for entities we have no way of fully knowing the thoughts (or lack thereof) behind the actions beyond biological impulses. 

For better, worse or whatever the vantage point may be here on these gifts, Captain Jack Sparrow said it best in the third instalment of Pirates Of The Caribbean to Davy Jones at the climax of the movie: cruelty is a matter of perspective. Davy Jones does challenge this assertion, though by enacting his own example of the matter unto those watching him stab Will Turner... And to that end then, what is a gift? A present, or the German word for poison? Both at once? Neither?

Burning Bridges

The Bridge burned. Its flames writhed, rose and settled like a funeral pyre. As such, the event was an inevitable one, preventing the monolithic embalmment seemingly confusing those who thought anything and especially connection, was so set in stone and everlasting.

Crumbling, crumbling,

As if disturbed determining

Thoughts of sitting,

Of yesterday, looking for ongoing reasoning;

Fragrant, vacant coming aloud-

Down and around forgetting;

Perfume and worry in eternal memory

Blaze stagnating as it died down slowly in contrast to the fast inferno it initially engulfed as. There was no way of determining the origin of this destruction as what was once held up now sizzled as it sank into the deep river below. From there the water washed away much of the lighter wreckage and left the heftier bits and what could not be swiftly swept up and away was the seared memory of what burned bright for only a bit while closing the gap between separate shores. There for a little smoke, then here no more. 

[nth untitled]

Fated in faith, lacerated in its wake

Wrought, devastated and bought out in poor taste;

Reframed, Revived, reminiscent of star-studded suicide-

Belated birthday, sucked in and up a flavoured vape,

Lasting in life , limerick and latent;

Framed disarray in scarred faces,

What is a waste?