Yes Instead of What?

By: Rorshach 1004

Date: 1st February 2016

Whenever I want to feel down, I can go down town, to the site of nothingness, literally nothing I can walk, and watch, and buy a coffee from a Polish girl. I think she was Polish, but she could have been Ukrainian, or anywhere in the EU really.

She said milk. I thought she said mirror. The bloke next to me translated, thanks for that mate. He’s used to it. I’m not. I couldn’t understand a word of what she said, and so I said ‘yes,’ instead of ‘what?’

Why bother to communicate when ‘yes’ will suffice?

Yes, I’ll have the milk.

Yes, I ordered the toastie.

Yes, I’ll pay my bill, my taxes, and my funereal rites.

But no, I will not wait in purgatory.

The big no, reserved for the self, the others always hearing yes, the no a surprise, keep it to yourself.

This blog is purgatory you know. Like town, it’s there, but what does it offer?

I have stayed away, and I feel good about that.

Return to nothingness is always painful.

A review of the latest 2000AD- Hero Pat Mills shouts, readers complain about ‘conspiracy’ stories their minds directly controlled by central government thought control Inc. 

The enslaved hate it when you talk about their chains. You will not go there. The man with a whip says it’s untrue, therefore it must be untrue. I have no chains. Why look for myself? I have far better things to do with my time.

Like?

Old Man Wolverine #1- Nothing to say, not going to try. Time travel genre, to change things before they get worse, revenge for future insults. Fantasy cult of personality, avoids the urgency of now.

Play here children. The house is on fire, but isn’t it so deliciously warm?

Why bother to play?

Childhood is over.

Endless rut of my own routine/perception wants me to stay, but I break away.

In purgatory’s circle you hear nothing, cept the sound of your own voice bouncing off the boomerang walls.

I used to live here, and stare at those walls.

Now I visit, and see where the dust grows.

Down town in the library, closed terminals, there’s a metaphor there.

Now nearer back home, the crumbling old Link Centre with new entrance system. Interior the same, access now modernised. Another metaphor? Something about modern change being on the surface level only? I suspect, actually, I know.

And I sit here complaining to purgatory thin Australian walls.

Hit this, back in my face, dull-hurts.

A joke played upon myself, for want of something to do.

It's okay.

Time slips away.

But I see the exit.

Oh look, a post in purgatory.

A stain on the wall.

Scratch and sniff?

I turn.

Leave.

Yes or What?

Ascending.

The image is from here: http://www.harthosp.org/InstituteOfLiving/AboutUs/OutsiderArtCollection/default.aspx?cHT=Laura%20Pierce

Black Metal Review- Split 12" with Hessian (The abyss stares back # 2) by Primitive Man- Unable

-Of the feelings unleashed through listening to 09:33 of extreme music. Make of it, what you will-

Get the song here:
https://primitivemandoom.bandcamp.com/album/split-12-with-hessian-the-abyss-stares-back-2

Primitive Man on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/primitivemandoom

Primitive Man on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/primitivemane


You think that morality is an abstract concept, that it’s not at all relevant in your life, a word as meaningless as a political slogan, an advertising campaign for a new, healthier margarine/butter concept? There is no God, there is no meaning, there is no point to anything, so let us all enjoy family time in a cocoon, post it on a government surveillance platform, an idealised mawkish memory for when the tears won’t come anymore. What you do has no meaning, so why don’t you just buy into the nothingness? Get this, that, the other. Cut through in-line, suckers everywhere. I’m going to get my own before somebody beats me to the punch, but where is the pat on the head? I need to convince myself that the lie is real. Charity mate, begins at home, and ends there. Nothingness begins to fill up with cancerous worms, you look for a lie, give me a lie so I can feel secure in my own emptiness. Not the void, there is no void, there is no nothing, though nothing is nothing. To give money to a collection box, somebody retiring at work for a plaque, nobody cares, nobody minds, they all buy in. Will a quid salve the rotten maw of my avaricious fawning, mourning conscience? And the collective, for there is a collective, ROTS. Oh, how it rots, maggots and flies everywhere as the mass collects in little tribal groups, feeling good, but only about themselves, only about their own, not caring, not really caring about what is going on around them, but only, only, only if inconvenience slights. Lives lived in routines of empty, selfish nothingness, there is no pit, I won’t look, don’t want to see, till one day. Routine broken, turn around, face what was there all along, no longer a concept, now as real as your boring traffic jam. The pit, the abyss stares back, will no longer be denied. A life wasted, you are dragged into what was always there, a pit of reality, and the eternal resting-place for your carrion prey urine blanched soul.

Rating: 10/10 (Don’t stare, don’t ignore, acknowledge, change, speak truth)

Comic review: Neverboy #3- Transcendent

Story: Shaun Simon
Art: Tyler Jenkins
Colours: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Cover art: Conor Nolan
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 6th May 2015


There are two full-page panels* of beautiful artwork in Neverboy #3, and after you experience them it’s quite easy to forget that you’ve just been reading a beautifully complex, subtle, intelligent and emotionally engaging comic book narrative as well.

Neverboy #3 has a feel of philosophy about it, that feeling of concepts that you can almost touch, but try as you might they always seem tantalising near, yet just out of reach. I really do enjoy the book. It’s one of those books that I read over and over again.

I take my time with it because I know it’s good, and I want to understand why it’s good. I want to deconstruct it, like you are supposed to do if you are a proper comic book reviewer, or even if you are just a bloke reviewing a comic book for his Internet blog.

I like how the story lets you make your own mind up about it, that’s probably the key. I like how it lays itself open. It’s not telling you what to think. It just wants you to engage, in your own way, to make of it what you like. That’s rare in comic books, a book that invites contemplation, doesn’t preach and doesn’t tell you what is right, what is wrong, what is real, what is fantasy.

It’s a floaty book with floaty art, and I love it. It’s arty, but good arty, if you know what I mean. There’s no snobbishness to it. It’s just plain and simple good.

There are two moments that stand-out to me about issue #3, the first is the moment when the artist character reveals his painting, the masterpiece that shows he is back on form, full of new inspiration and ready to go. That’s a difficult thing to do as the painting is shown in a full-page panel, and it has to be good, really good, to work within the narrative.

You can’t talk about a writer regaining his creative muse and then show a blah example of his work that is supposed to be great, can you? What you need is something that is actually really very good, and guess what? That’s what they have here in this book, a full page painting of a diner with two space alien type creatures emerging from it’s Dr Who Tardis like front door, and it looks absolutely superb. I want it framed. I want it on my wall. I want to spend money on it and enjoy it every single time I walk into my living room.

The second moment is when a group of women talk about their life motivations. They openly admit that they live for material concerns, for shopping, for a house, a car, the status, the shoes, the plastic surgery. It’s all empty physicality, appearance, that idea that we are animals, that you get what you can because death lasts forever, and there is no heaven.

That Satanic (and that’s what real Satanism actually is, the belief in nothing but the animal self) is the dominant mind-set of our age. To see it expressed here by a group of pretty young rich ladies seems awfully real, and it’s the contrast with the mind-set of the artist, of the fantasy dreamer that puts a sharp edge to that awful contrast that is a real as real gets. 

Neverboy is fantasy, but fantasy on the edge of brutal reality, and to see the juxtaposition between the fakery of flesh, ego, materialism and status, and that which comes from the pure joy of the creative process is quite a jolt. It forces you into the realisation that there is a truth transcendent from the material status of the self, and that happiness does not come from a thing, it comes from within.

Neverboy #3 then continues the excellence exhibited in the first two issues of the title. I’ve attempted to get to the core of why it works here, but I really cannot do it justice with words alone. Buy the book, read it slowly, enjoy it, then do it all over again.


Rating: 10/10 (Transcendent)

* The first panel is in the main narrative of the text and is by main artist Tyler Jenkins. The second full-page panel of beautiful artwork comes after the conclusion of the story and is by Taylan Kurtulus.