✶✞ Break out your cassette player for a year-end interlude. This episode aired on December's moon in 2021. ✶✞
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Haaappy Chanuchrismakwanzaaaa. Or Festivus, for the rest of us.
Too soon? Happy Thanksgiving.
Too late? Happy Groundhog's Day.
Happy whenever you're listening. I hate to have to do this when there's so much action coming, but...there simply isn't time. So here we go.
Speaking of awkward transitions, what another year it has been. But I don't have to tell you; you've probably heard a thing or two about it.
Although it still finishes shy of, say, most every year between 1939 and 1945; of 1918, featuring the ongoing first world-wide war and the Spanish influenza pandemic; of 1349, with the Black Death mauling Eurasia and Africa; and of 536, which introduced a mysterious fog, actually from a volcanic eruption, blotting out the sun for months on end and leading to summer snows and cross-continental famine. So there's that.
That volcano bit has actually happened multiple times across human history, with one of those sunless summers keeping Lord Byron and the Shelleys cooped up indoors telling fantastical stories, birthing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Speaking of creating a monster, Keen's Turn takes up all of my free time, which I have had and will continue to have none of over this month, so here's some old meandering on writer's block in the meantime, then we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next moon.
Ahem.
Where is my muse, I miss her dear
delightful whispers in my ear
I miss her sweet and dulcet song
the way she finds the words that...rhyme
I miss her bold and sweeping scenes
connections made unwittingly
so effortlessly stitching seams
with bits that fit there...fittingly
Redundancy she doesn't do
no fluff, you know, that's surely true
She doesn't natter needlessly
or break the rhyme scheme heedlessly
I miss her careful, crafted play
in which I have no word, no hand
I miss her vision, wit, the way
she flaunts a syllabic command
The way she works me through the night
until I have got it...down right
The way she drives me like a slave
and stings me when I misbehave
(By "misbehave" I mean have a job
some friends, a lover, and a dog)
The way I've time for nothing else
and can't direct her at...what...needs to be done
She is a selfish piece of work
but how I miss that little jerk
I need to end this poem now
I'm certain she would know...how
This is the end of Side A. Please flip the cassette tape over to continue.
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Uplifting related reading (if you know how to add links in here, I'd love to hear from you. I mean seriously. There is no obvious way to do this. But there's also no obvious way to have it not open new pages by pasting them under the page I'm on, not display "null" instead of my story, not delete random chunks from pasted-in text, and not have the entire site be in Turkish, so my hopes are not high.):
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
https://www.science.smith.edu/climatelit/frankenstein-and-the-vampyre/
https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Death
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive
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Keen's Turn: Descent & Depravation
VampireJared Stern is going to die. That is, unless he can stop a vampire before the vampire gets his fangs in him... ✶✞ When righteous daydreamer Jared Stern chances upon the vampire Keen's murderous meal, he's thrust into a battle against a creature t...
