Dark Entries faces The Horror of The Red Room!

Dark Entries finds itself honoured by guesting on the Ruminations from the Red Room podcast for the fourth time! This installment surprised us with the completely unannounced subject of The Horror! Luckily our Gothic background finds us excessively overprepared.



Listen to us here.

Host Mitch, co-guest Mike, and I discuss the whyfors of the genre, the psychological versus the outré, the lowbrow slasher against the classic aesthetic, why book to film translations have to jump a high hurdle to even get close to print, what was that first moment where The Horror crept into your childhood, personal paranormal incursions, and more blood dipped beastliness.



While I had suggested the title Rötschreck in the Red Room, Rötschreck being the "Red Fear" of fire or sunlight from Vampire: the Masquerade, I find that this word doesn't actually seem to exist outside the tabletop gaming world, so Mitch prudently went with Recoil instead. So much for my faux-German vocabulary.


Hear about my encounter with a chupacabra, a poetic waxing on the Vincent Price/Roger Corman/Edgar Allan Poe films, extrapolate as to the amorphous nature of what a ghost might be, ooooh Kate Beckinsale moments, the monster as protagonist, and other Dark Entries-styled fare. And yes, my blog is calling from inside your house, and your children are already dead. Spooked? You should be.

[Vincent Price smolders under the shadow of the bat.]

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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+.

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.

o' how i burn brilliantly on my course.

Máni & Sunna run through the heavens,

just ahead of the wolves who will one grim day catch them.

They can expect nothing better than this.

But o' how they shine.



I run ahead,

the teeth of my dying father

and my dying marriage

that bloody my heels into sunset.

But o' how I burn,

brilliantly on my course.

the sound of separation.

Recently I began transferring my digital music to my BlackBerry, and in the process thought I was in a place in my life where I didn't need any of the sad music anymore. I had what I needed forever, and the things that the music wept for didn't apply. I was happy.

Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, I find I again need that music, those tracks that will weep with me in the days to come.

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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.

on the imminent Death of My Father.

What we wanted from the second visit to the urologist was a tube camera surprise reveal of a Cracker Jack toy mucking things up inside my Dad's bladder, with its rapid removal, a pat on his back, and a release note saying he could go home and enjoy the next ten years of his life.

What we got was the laparoscope showing nothing wrong, which meant Dad's impassibly enlarged prostate had already taken its toll on his bladder's muscles, stretching it out to the point where it no longer functions, which leaves us with three options:

1. Wear a Foley cathether up your dick for the rest of your life, at the risk of your dementia forgetting what it is every fifteen minutes, and just yanking it out to cause injurious bleeding and risk of infection on top of the usual risk of infection for just having one up in there.

2. Surgery for a suprapublic catheter through the bladder wall for less discomfort, but still run the exact same risks of yanking it out and infection, with the all risks of surgery on top of that.

3. Remove the catheter altogether, let the bladder fill up until the kidneys toxify & fail, and let my Dad mercifully go.

Fuck you, medical science. You're still fraught with barbaric inadequacies, semi-educated too-late guesswork, and certain failure. Fuck. You.

Now it's just a matter of waiting, and while waiting I'm going to write this eulogy:

“Wealth dies. Friends die. One day you too will die. But, the thing that never dies is the judgement on how you have spent your life.”
― Hávamál, stanza 75 - The Sayings of Odin, The High One

[Dad was a Boy Scout.]

William Maytorena Jr was a simple man with simple pleasures. All he needed to be happy was a good comedy film, ice cream, or a bag of hot chicharrónes in one hand and a beer in the other. When I was a kid, I'd ride along with him every week to stop at Nana Mercy's to pick up a little blue enameled speckled olla of his mom's magic beans. Those beans were home in a pot to him.

Beyond this core of winning simplicity, he explored other things. After he got his first & only awesome rack stereo from Gemco, I would rouse in the middle of the night and find him awake well past midnights, sitting on the floor, listening to classical music on KUAT, fingers paused over the cassette deck's recording button to capture some timeless piece of Beethoven, Mozart, Hayden, or Tchaikovsky, a normal bias tape locked & loaded, pencil hovering over the liner notes. He'd compile nearly a hundred of these tapes, even branching out into some jazz selections, fostering a deeper appreciation for these genres, growing & broadening his artistic points of reference. The late night passion was inspiring, and I think I was the only one to ever see it in action.

[First date at the Tucson Hotel, 1968. Que suave!]

This broadness had its roots: The story goes that Bill was headed off to be a priest, and to safeguard this divine vocation he installed a strict three-date rule with the girls he saw -- but he went on a fateful fourth date with his Maria Elena, my mom, and here I am talking to you about not just another reclusive church father, but my father who chose to embrace right action in the broader secular world, and the reward of a loving wife along with it.

[Getting married at the justice courts, 1970.]

In the marriage, he was the more relaxed partner by far, and he knew when to leave the room when the yelling got louder than the sense. His patience, tolerance, and forgiveness were a saintly inheritance from his properly named mother Mercy. In retrospect, Dad tolerated alot of my gifted childhood arrogance, 1980s sarcasm, unnecessary teen attitude, and sophomoric overconfidence in a graceful fashion. He rocked, as fathers go, way more than I knew at the time.



On off days my Mom would call him useless around the house, and sometimes that was actually true. He never taught me to use his tools, not because he hadn't the time, but because he was hiding the fact that he secretly didn't know how to use them himself. A hammer & some duct tape would often mickey mouse it when it probably shouldn't have. But Gods bless him, he would try, which nowadays is surely more than most husbands.

[Dad & Mom loved to dance. It was one of their things. 1986.]

As a family, we had the privilege of travelling alot, and Dad helped show me the value of travel, of fearlessly going over the horizon to see the world in a broader sense. One summer off in my childhood, we hit 26 states, and he was the driver of impossible distances, getting us safely to all the places we enjoyed together pre-GPS. One year we went to D.C. There was a day where Mom was sick and stayed at the hotel. Dad & I got out of the room, and we figured out the city's Metro, and found a Chinese restaurant for lunch. The food was nothing special, but it tasted special to me because it was the first time I really appreciated Chinese food, and that was specifically because of my Dad's company that afternoon, a memory I'll always carry with me.

[Dad always used a double sided yellow comb/brush combo for his hair, and favoured wearing guayaberas of various light colours. He was fairly meticulous about shining his shoes, too. With Mom & I, 1985, at my junior high school graduation.]

Emotionally he showed calm stoicism in the face of a false heart attack, my three scorpion stings, and other maladies that would send normal people into a panic. Perhaps this was military training from the Air National Guard, or let-god prayering from the seminary, but he had faith that things would work out in such situations one way or another.

[Looking good in that guayabera at some event, 1981.]

For years, I didn't get what my Dad did for a living until one day after middle school I sat in his office at the Crippled Childrens' Clinic on Broadway. A weird looking kid who had something wrong with him took a moment to give me the elevator speech to explain his hydrocephalus, about how he would die if my father didn't arrange regular appointments to get his head drained, and find medical coverage to cover the exceptional costs of that. My Dad saved children, he saved families, he saved lives. What he did was that important. It took emotional fortitude & undefeatable optimism.


My Dad knew everybody because he would talk to anybody. He was socially fearless like that. Someone in any store checkout line everywhere knew him, which also meant leaving took an extra 20 minutes. And he'd always talk to babies or toddlers, making that strange elephantine noise with his compressed lips that always got their attention. I repeatedly suggested he should run for mayor, but he was too good a man for politics, and he knew it. At work he'd wear this completely ridiculous sculptured Mickey Mouse head watch with a mouth that moved and spoke the time. He wore it at the cost of any personal dignity because the kids he had appointments with loved it, and the spectacle of it saying the time allowed him to finish talks with their parents, who we're appreciative of this clever ruse.

Sometimes he'd uncharacteristically call himself a "rabble rouser", usually referencing his early days marching with Chicano activists & organizing the brown citizens to get El Rio Community Health Center built in the first place. After this feat he worked there for decades until they forgot who helped get them built & they laid him off.

[Dad doing his daily legwork on the telephone at El Rio. 1974.]

After that, he got an awful job at Child Protective Services working for the county, which was too many cases for any one man, but he soldiered through it better than most. One afternoon I happened to be in the car when he decided he was near enough to a case for a home check. He drove our humble VW bus up this driveway, and he suddenly stopped. "You see that dish?", he said, pointing at the two thousand dollar huge saucer currently following an invisible satellite in orbit. "These people are getting money from us because they told us their kid needed it. They don't if they spend that much on TV. You wait here." He got down, adjusted his belt like a gunfighter, and went inside to have some hard words that the parents in there needed to get told. He didn't shirk that kind of confrontation when it needed doing. He was brave & honest like that.

The trouble started when Dad fell into a hole. There was a dwarf lemon tree at the new house that needed planting and he was moving some rocks in a wheelbarrow past the hole for the tree when the load unbalanced, and he fell in. His back was never the same, and he would never stand straight or tall again. Suddenly looking at the view from a few inches less and down at your feet has to change you, and damaging falls when you're older change you. The memory issues began sooner than later, and, unlike alot of people who get angry, violent, or depressed, Dad didn't fall into those emotional holes. He kept his sense of humour in the face of dementia with Lewy bodies & Parkinsonism because, under the shuffling, bent form he now appeared to be, Dad had the strength of character to remain the man he was: Funny. Lovable. Winning. He flirted with a nurse near the end. "You have pretty eyes," he said like the old smoothie he always was.

One night while at St Mary's Hospital for one of series of medical issues, he raised up his arms and "called a meeting". He told me to be quiet while he talked. For the next hour and a half he elaborated to Michelle & I a plan to take over the city. He called it "The Working Joes' Plan". Tucson would be divided into sectors, each ruled by a "working joe" to keep the people in line and see to their needs. These everymen would meet with him for updates, and he would problem solve with them, and personally see to the defense & control of all Tucson. There was to be a train with orphans & needy children who would be transported, fed, clothed, & cared for somewhere in there. And when he stopped speaking, we were amused, and more than that, amazed.

You see, this 81-year-old's plan was a metaphor for control of the world he could no longer neurologically understand. Mom would by habit put on the news, and on some level he saw things spinning out of control. Against this he came up with his plan for Tucson, the city whose people he loved and cared about all his life, an ultimate plan for municipal succession & protection of the city he grew up in, to safeguard it from rampant criminal elements within and political-economic forces without. Bill Maytorena would wear an iron crown and a velvet gauntlet. His heart was so large, he would've taken care of it all, for us, for you.

“Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself must also die, but he who wins word fame lives forever.”
― Hávamál, stanza 76 - The Sayings of Odin, The High One

[Dad's hesitantly humble grin in front of the room at El Rio that bears his name on the plaque behind him.]

Myself aside, an attentive wife, the countless children he saved & helped, and a room at El Rio Clinic named after him, his legacy is how much he cared & worked at caring with successful results. That was the grandeur of his life, besides knowing how to appreciate creature comforts, laughter, simple times, and priceless moments.

I know you people here won't forget Bill Maytorena Jr. As long as you tell his story and carry forward his nobility, he will be alive, and we will always be better people for knowing him. And he'd want you to have a good time at this thing, so go live it up for him today, and for the rest of your life, with his spirit in mind.





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Addenda: A few nights after writing this, my father shushed everyone in the room, asked if "the papers to leave were in order", kissed us on the hands, told us goodbye, and closed his eyes. We thought that was it. My aunts showed up with a priest at my mother's request the next morning, who administered last rites, but my Dad was none too pleased to see him, spat out the host, and grabbed his bowl of oatmeal from his caretaker and fed himself breakfast for a change. There's fight in my old man yet.



Since then we've spent time together playing Crazy Eights, drinking fancy strong beers, and watching some Northern Exposure, which has been priceless because it's all something we both love. Still, I know the other shoe's going to drop, and he's going to swing the other way sooner than later, and die. Mentally, I accept that. Emotionally, I'm going to be a fucking trainwreck, but I'm glad I took the time to write the above so I'll have the right thing to say when that time comes, and "word fame" to give him so he will live forever through those words. Until then, my Dad'll still be beating me at cards, and I'm grateful for every hand he can still deal.



I love you, Dad. This is for you.

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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+.

how Internet 3.0?

Nearly everyday I make an effort as a dedicated GooglePlus user to read the feed and post some specialized content that my 500+ followers hopefully haven't seen. I've been writing for years, creating original articles & reviews for my blog Dark Entries, cultivating a global audience (thanks again Mother Russia!), and investing alot of time to curate material that I myself would love to see.



But think ahead: When the goggles of Internet 3.0 go on, what happens to Internet 2.0's collections, community associations, expressions of fandom, 140-character blatherings, your unboxing videos, that food photo gallery you made, and especially the network of online professionals/friends/strangers you've built? Will internet 3.0's new paradigm of altered reality & virtual reality interfaces just write those off like a wind into a house of cards, scattering your decade of 2-D wall postings into oblivion?



Granted, there's a majority of user emphasis on the moment, on the post of the now. The backcatalog of content isn't usually gone through, as it seems viewers only want the new postings from the time forward from when they joined or subscribed. (Yet I know I scroll back, feeling like I'm digging for buried treasures when I discover a subject for the first time, playing catch-up to the group's reactions to episodes, or news, or evolutions in that subject.)



And granted, there's alot not to like about the current circle jerk of material, those deformed viral cats, the overposted meme, political/religious outrage, historical fingerpointing, racist interjections, trolls, and a safe anonymity from which to flare out any unintelligible, unfounded, or unmerited thing they please. There are no sacred cows, no respect, and thus no real convincing anyone about anything. Unattributed content is a particular pet peeve of ours as originators of artistic & informational value should always be recognized.



There's a lawlessness that's beyond apology, and a freedom that produces great beauty, and as audiences & authors we suffer one to enjoy the other.

[Where have you gone, ASCII art?]

 Fixtures of Internet 1.0 didn't weather the transition  with the prestige it once had. Large 2.0 social media hubs quickly usurped the attention & content from former giants like The Well, Usenet, LiveJournal, Angelfire, Geocities, and other once-established specialty niche threaded forums with participation ranked user mini-profiles.



Thus it's our concern that our irreplaceable time, our recognitions, and our creative output not be unmade, or left behind in the ignored cyberbasement. We wouldn't have bothered if we hadn't felt they were worth posting in the first place and at this point we feel having them sidelined would be unacceptable.

We would like to trust the current social networks to create an importing tool, something that will transform our postings into galleries or collections that will attach to our avatar or float near our person or decorate our virtual castle to summarize this cyberpublic history of ourselves, perhaps a recognition emblem of legacy content that can still be carried forward & explored by others. Yet watching how companies abandon software & applications with no consideration for the loyalist user who believes in the platform or format more than they do, we fear they may do the same in this newfound digital arena.



[Yes +Google VR , we're specifically asking you on behalf of your 300M social media users & the internet as a whole. And +Magic Leap & +Neal Stephenson , we're curious if you've considered our concerns, as we like your ideas.]

[The Augmented Reality overlay as drafted by Magic Leap.]

  We'd love some sort of Tronscaped interface option, which would clue into the cyberspace aesthetic we've anticipated since William Gibson first wrote & +Steven Lisberger first imagined.

[Map of The Grid!]

So we wonder with 3.0 just over the crest of the digital tomorrow, should we still be bothering to post & look as much as we do if it's all going to be binned? This uncertainty makes us hesitant, the unanswered question disturbing in its consequences.



I've got books to read in the meantime, which aren't going to change anytime soon, and a map to make. Someone do let us know before this continues, yes?

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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+.

do you know what it means to miss the Kingdom of New Orleans?

Dreamt I visited the Kingdom of New Orleans. A cloaked Mardi Gras cult kidnapped my girlfriend, ceremonially sacrificed her, then shot & left me for dead.

A princess in disguise as an urban "prince" found me, tending my wound. Waiting to regain her throne from the interim republic, she DJed dirty beats, living in a rundown five-story house where she threw underground parties & exotic illegal fundraising dinners in. The city was walled like Carcassonne with additional giant saurian sculptures, a much larger Vieux Carré inside accented by medieval stonework & gargoyles, neon & glass, the sprawl extending all the way down to the Gulf Coast. The suburbs were composed of both brownstone and the raised gabled roofed houses, with bright but peeling shutters the Big Easy's known for.

The city was attacked by a sorcerer who came from the West with thousands of troops and gargantuan automatons, and I thought the city was done for.

[Carcassonne lit up. The city walls were like this but with neon accents.]

Then the outer wall's saurian sculptures animated, slashing with claws and breathing fire in their city's defense. The troops got in via many of the entrances, but the citizens of N.O. were no slouches, all taking up arms to defend their kingdom. The princess discarded her disguise, donned ballistic armor, and organized the people more effectively under her royalist banner. We fought the troops, but the invaders were overwhelming. She used magick to phase us into the depths of the city, but somewhere along the way I found myself displaced back in our world.

Weeks passed, and the phone rang. "It's the princess on the line," my Dad said, pausing, then, "At least that what she says she is." She told me that the city had been kept safe and she'd regained the throne, and was wondering when I'd be back for cake, champagne, and her latest setlist. But I knew that I couldn't get back there, that however I got there in the first place wouldn't be available again for a long time, and I was left saddened by the lack of means to return ...

... or couldn't I?

This dream of the Kingdom of New Orleans was amazing and all-too vivid. It felt more real than imagined. Sure, I could craft a short story or novella from this New Orleans that never Louisiana Purchase-d, that was discovered by France pre-Columbus and broke away from European colonial rule early. Instead I'm inquiring about the realness of the city, the feeling of its being out there somewhere, a solid in the chaos of dream, a true place.

[Crescent City Bridge. photo by Fred Gramoso.]

We can entertain the possibility of another thread on the Web of Wyrd, a variant design woven by The Norns to awe & explore, a quantum tapestry warp & wefted of a differing time & place, a shadow of choices not made here but elsewhere, where another version of ourselves louches purple absinthe at Duke Lafitte's Parlour House and eats ghost pepper & blue okra gumbo on cobblestoned Saint Peter Street.

This seems akin to a geographic slippage from the Berenstein to Berenstain universe, the rustling of cousinly leaves together from near branches of Yggdrasil, touching and aware of each other for a long, strange, wondrous moment.

In its Calvino-esque way, this Invisible City of New Orleans overlays, nests within, or is hidden upon the one we already know. Could the Texan Wizard's attack & invasion be the destructive Katrina of that world? Could the defensive saurians be our Louisiana swamps' aggressive alligators, memories of ancient colossi, or perhaps fossils & petrifactions given life in our foreshadowed future?

[Pink Alligator sculpture by the Cracking Art Group.]

Maybe the calls that say nothing from unknown numbers on your cellphone are coming from there, the princess dialing, looking for sleeping tourists who were once heroes of her kingdom's greatest battle. The city & her androgynous princess will haunt me, and I will miss them. So we ask: Have you been to the Kingdom of New Orleans? And if so, how did you get there?

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By day, Guillermo Maytorena IV is a happy bookstore fixture, but at night he's an Investigative Norse Mythologist! He's also willing to entertain the idea of being an adult film star, gynobot tester, or a tour guide in Scandinavia. Should you have any interest in his expertise or opportunities in those arenas, do contact him.

accepting my deification.

Yesterday a man whom I consider locally influential and seriously accomplished emphatically insisted on telling me:



"You're famous in this city. Tucson knows who you are. Accept it." 



Tucson, thank you for confirming my inner superiority complex and giving me the apotheosis to local god I know I've been worthy of. I love you back.

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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.

the politeness of melee weapons.

If it were again socially acceptable to carry the melee weapon of one's choice, we feel the level of condescension in dialogues would quickly evaporate.

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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.