except that you HAVE to read the last line.
Putting the “Party” into Politics, we present (courtesy of the esteemed Dr. Boli) the League of Surrealist Voters; note that while the votes are real, the voters themselves must be surreal. And that describes everyone around here!
Everyone’s heard of the fashion police (they were even handing out tickets here in Vancouver a couple of years back, but they must have stopped since nobody’s tried to arrest me recently) but what about art cops? And I’m not talking about the Bureaucratocracy that runs the galleries; I’m talking about actual men and women of action, prowling around, making sure that art is paid the respect which is its due, whether that’s busting the kneecaps of some thug who tries to stash his gum underneath the Louise Nevelson or this:
Literati are perhaps the least respected of professionals. Oh, sure, every doctor gets hit up at parties for a snap diagnosis freebie (Miss Manners’ advice? Reply “certainly, now if you’ll just disrobe I’ll examine you.” Hey, it WOULD liven up a party) but how many of them get “I’ve always been good with cutlery, probably would make a pretty snappy surgeon, doncha think?”
Writers? Editors? Every feeb who knows the alphabet has internalized that old “Everyone has one novel in them.” Yeah, maybe. But whoever said that (Confucius? Hesiod? Boccaccio? I wanna give that man a swiftian kick in the legpit region, I’m telling you) was careful not to claim it would be a good novel. Or even a novel one.
You see what I’m getting at here?
Few indeed are even the true the classics of literature that couldn’t be improved by the judicious exercise of editorial oversight. Think, for instance, how much better most of Thomas Hardy would be with a restrained sprinkling of snappy musical numbers. Think of how much more eagerly students would tear through The Canterbury Tales if they were a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys mystery instead. Think: The Gulag Archipelago With Zombies.
Oh hey…
Where was I? Right, editors and improvement. Longtime readers of the ol’ raincoaster blog (for what crime can this be the inhuman sentence? I ask yez) will be aware that we at raincoaster HQ have long cherished a fondness for the old-fashioned Yankee consumptive Howard Phillips Lovecraft; fewer, however, will realize that in addition to being a talented author of eldritch tales™ Lovecraft was also an editor and collaborator of prolixity and profound talent.
Climb with us into the Wayback Machine, set the dial for “Arkham,” and behold the birth of a career:
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the gayest video of all time (including ElektronikSupersonik and all of the Village People):
WaHo (waffle house) by the Athens Boy Choir
Did you know that the Waffle House is a religion in parts of the US, and has its own Shrine? I did not. And did you know that there are significant numbers of songs called Waffle House? I did not. And it’s really late, I should have been done two hours ago and sleeping by now, and so I’m not going to root through the whole intertubes for the lyrics to this one. I’m sure you’ll be singing along in a couple of replays anyway.
And then you’ll turn gay!
raincoaster 