Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (12 page)

Skaate Inskviln was bitten by a scorpion and died in a Tempe, Arizona, whorehouse in 1913.

We hope this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card sets you off on the right foot on your path of success!

The image on this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card is from the frontispiece of Braeburn Vollrath’s
The Howler at the Rim of Eternity,
first published by Arkham House in 1921. It is a subdued reproduction of the Aryan Idiot-Cannibal Fetish, carved into the litten arch of the Greblischtenmorgue and presumably destroyed after the building was firebombed at the end of World War II.

Vollrath, who died in the San Quentin gas chamber (he reportedly strapped himself in), said of the image, “Its gaze unlocked a room in my nightmares which should have remained closed.” Shortly after publication of
The Howler,
Vollrath was arrested and confessed to the Cambridge Jawbone Murder Spree. Despite overwhelming evidence of a second killer, Vollrath famously repeated, “The face. The face in the stone and me alone.” The late-seventies Finnish death-metal band Hastur used this quote as a refrain in their song “Howler.”

Few, if any, copies of
The Howler
exist today.

On July 5, 1974, a yellowed frontispiece page from
The Howler,
along with parts from seventeen different bodies, was found in the apartment of sex slayer/occultist Charles Sugar. When asked where he obtained the frontispiece, Sugar said, “Look in a mirror after midnight and ask Vollrath.” In prison, Sugar overdosed on his own antiseizure medication. The frontispiece page disappeared.

We hope this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card has helped “scare” up some fun for you this Halloween!

The woven farm scene on this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card comes from a traditional Wampanoag Indian blanket motif, which depicts Indians growing corn, squash, and beans under a warm sun. It is a scene of peacefulness and contentment, showing the whole village working together for the betterment of everyone. During the “first Thanksgiving” at Plymouth, Wampanoag Indians—including a Patuxet Indian named Squanto—helped teach the Pilgrims how to farm, fish, and hunt and shared the bounty of that first feast. A TRADITION THAT CONTINUES TODAY AND JESUS AND 9/11.

We hope this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card helped you “gobble” up some Thanksgiving cheer!

The three wise men bearing gifts on this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card tells the beloved story of the birth of Jesus—a savior who would bring peace to the world, lift up the poor and outcast, and foster goodwill toward all men, great and small. His gospel of peace is preached today by the heads of wealthy, powerful churches and government leaders.

The gifts of gold, myrrh, and frankincense helped Joseph and Mary flee with the baby Jesus, since King Herod wanted to cut his head off, because of the whole “bringing peace to the world” thing.

We hope this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card ensures “yule” have a merry Christmas!

The “three lilies on the gravestone” etching on this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card was taken from a sixteenth-century booklet,
A Gentleman’s Amiable Conversement on the Diggeing Up of Freshe Boddies for Experiments Scientifical and Eldritch
.

Throughout England, during the reign of Elizabeth I, dramatic strides were made in the science of diagnostic medicine and the study of the advancement of diseases.

One of the surest ways for a young medical student to view the intricacies and wonders of the human body was to dissect freshly exhumed corpses. By placing three lilies on the gravestone of a recently deceased loved one, a family could signal a “resurrection man” that they were willing to allow the corpse to be stolen, often for a few shillings, which were usually wedged between the earth and the edge of the gravestone, to be collected later.

Of course, with today’s modern science, computer simulation technology, and genetic manipulation, the practice of grave robbing for the advancement of medical science is a thing of the past. Today, three lilies placed on a grave is a signal to no one except a wealthy necrophile, many of whom are willing to exchange a fresh corpse for, say, ten thousand dollars in nonsequential traveler’s checks, sealed in an airtight bag and wedged between the earth and gravestone.

Ten thousand. Maybe more for a dead teen athlete.

We hope this Chamomile Kitten™ greeting card helps to chase away those “graveyard blues”!

Once I started doing stand-up comedy, I couldn’t get enough.

The idea of writing a book, becoming a journalist and then, hopefully, a novelist, couldn’t withstand my sudden ambition to craft a perfect dick joke. Five thousand words a day seemed silly when I could bring a room full of drunks together with fifteen perfectly chosen words.

I loved getting to hang out with comedians. After years of record store and movie theater retail, and then temping in offices, it seemed otherworldly that I was suddenly surrounded by a peer group that was clever, quick, and discerning.

I also loved the hacks. Mainly because they helped throw off the public perceptions of stand-up comedy. The average person’s view of stand-up comedy was degraded and dismissive. The stuff that was being broadcast on TV—endless brick-background cable shows and watered-down “urban” neon mini-auditoriums with a
Lethal Weapon
saxophone sting—was truly awful. People— especially dipshit pseudointellectuals who ate up one-man theater shows that were, essentially, reworked hack standup
premises—avoided comedy clubs. Maybe they couldn’t stand the fact that comedy clubs simply announced what they were—booze-ups with jokes as lubricant.

It reminded me of how literati avoid genre fiction or film snobs sniff at big-budget Hollywood movies or exploitation trash. It was how a lot of musicians treated rap and hip-hop when they first appeared.

But avoiding the trash makes you miss truly astonishing moments of truth, genius, and invention. If you shut your mind to science fiction, you’re never going to read
The Martian Chronicles
or
The Left Hand of Darkness.
If you think murder mysteries are airport garbage, then you’re denying yourself
The Horizontal Man
or
The Daughter of Time
. If movies begin at Ozu and end at Roemer for you, then the subversive brilliance of
Deathdream
and
Rat Pfink a Boo Boo
will leave you in the dust. Die-hard rock-and-rollers will never discover Biz Markie’s
The Biz Never Sleeps
. Indie music hard-liners rarely venture into country music territory. Too bad—Dolly Parton’s
Jolene
and Waylon Jennings’s
Honky Tonk Heroes
are as essential as
Last Splash
and
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

And it’s the same with stand-up. Yes, I sifted through a lot of garbage in the late eighties and early nineties. But there were always unexpected moments of transcendence and originality. And knowing they were hidden in strip malls made me feel like I was a member of one of the last mystery cults on Earth. Like when the Fat Doctor said, one night’s at Garvin’s, “I used to work on the suicide hotline but I got fired. People would call up and I kept seeing their point.” Then there was Mark Fineman, who
said, half to himself, “I don’t need to curse to do comedy. But I need to curse to live.” Hell, Lord Carrett’s non sequitur “You know they won’t let you buy a gun if you’re crying?” inspired a Holly Golightly song.

A History of America
from 1988 to 1996

I started my stand-up career in the summer of 1988 at a Washington, DC, comedy club called Garvin’s. It’s now a gay nightclub called the Green Lantern.

The older, mainstream comedians I worked with laid it out clear and simple for me—you wrote and honed a clean five minutes, went on
The Tonight Show,
got called over to the couch by Johnny, got a sitcom, became a star. There was
no other way to do it
. That was the endpoint and the reward.

Or you could get a gimmick—magic tricks, juggling, song parodies—and make a fortune at colleges and corporate gigs.

And then there were the misguided, passionate rebels. I don’t mean the ones who went on to success and relevance. I mean the forgotten ones, the ones for whom things were
way
too personal and their defiance against the “clean five/Carson/sitcom/success” cattle chute made them sputtering, angry shamans of nonconformity. Of course, their fate was stranger and more comfortable than they could have imagined.

I worked with variations of these three comedians until I started headlining full-time in 1996. Then I was lucky enough to get to pick my openers.

I never got to pick my headliners. We had nothing in common, and I truly miss them.

Me:
And thank you, folks,
all
of you, for coming out. Let’s welcome to the stage Blazer Hacksworth!

Blazer:
Hey, how’re you doing? That’s great. Sooooo . . . 19
88,
huh? You see how Sonny Bono got elected mayor of Palm Springs? He got
votes,
babe! He should do okay in government. He already knows enough Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, huh? That song, you remember?

Okay . . .

And what’s with this “perestroika” that Gorbachev’s going on about? Sounds like something I got from that hooker on New Year’s Eve! Hey, Gorby, use a little Windex and wipe that grape juice stain off your head, then we’ll talk, hah?

Oh, and you saw how C. Everett “Kook” said nicotine was as addictive as cocaine and heroin? That’s right, ’cause whenever I want a cigarette, I have to tie off a vein! “Hey, man, you want to do some rails?” “Of what, Colombian?” “No, Marlboros!” Yeah, right.

Sooo, Quayle’s an idiot . . .

[Four dick jokes and a Jim-from
-Taxi
impression later,
             Blazer leaves the stage to wild applause.]