Sat at the desk, waiting

The sting of winter continues to penetrate Melbourne from the arctic south, restlessly wailing through the night and hiding during the shine of the morning sun. Nothing can vanquish its terror, not even a mazinger, but the days are short and our homes are warm. Our bellies are full and our hearts are strong. Even the shakes can’t get us down. Outside this dream land is the ocean of desires. Over it, many of us will travel for better or worse; yet even the bad days of travel nurture the soul. The drum beat stops, and I am waking from an incessant hangover. Joker and the gang are calling. They are out on a ship in the wastelands of future Tokyo. A future we are trying to prevent by challenging the labyrinth, defeating the roxxonian minotaur, kissing the damsel, lighting the torch. Til all are one.

Forecast recommends to try something new

The stinging pain of monotony dries out the soul, removing the moisture of passion and clinging to the husk that’s left as it carries out it’s vile nature. There is no stopping it because it is hardwired into reality. You experience things this way and they turn out that way. The best thing to do is remove yourself from the area of infection, these are usually spaces filled with an atmosphere, people and processes. Like a factory, these spaces are mechanical but on a natural level. Once you remove yourself from the infected space, the soul begins to heal, quite quickly. The fresh air feels fresher, the birds sound chirpier, the sun seems brighter, even when the days are still overcast. And you no longer have to soldier on, now you get to mosey on along like a prancing race horse on show day.

Into the apocalyptic nature of a shadowy internet

In the recesses of the web, there are still people clamouring for the man-machine evolution to begin. Speaking in apocalyptic tongues and political overtones, these misbegotten men struggle with the pressure they feel at the edge of society, pushing them further into the brink. Many of them wear masks to work, to bed, lost in fantastical dreams where they manage to escape the harsh realities of the burgeoning cybernetic world forming around our senses and the pangs of the common struggle. Dictatorships stemming from fear at the highest levels of power overhang in their minds and this paranoia brings with it a vision of the end, leading them forums where only the insane survive. They tap away without any real clue that they’re being watched through cameras on their technology. The watchers, self-appointed bogeymen, invaders of the furtherest reaches of inner-space, are themselves being watched by the underdogs still running a setup with CRT monitors and VHF signals backed up by FFS skills. They all eat flies and spiders, and they’re mad. The world is crumbling all the way into Christmas because the boy with the red laser sword is on the screen again. While the mutant children of the atomic past are found crawling through the mess these men and their dial up machines have left for us. Is there nothing we can do to save this place from ourselves? Unite X.

Weird Tales 2: Channel Surfing

Starving parents killed and ate their children before moving on to the entire village, killing 50 children in total, at times preserving their salted flesh for later consumption, even though many were…

Victims of Hypnotic Holdups have formed a vigilante group to get vengeance on the thieves who stole their belongings, proving that most conspiracies end with a simple…

Buy now, the impregnation kit to give your friend a case of propaganda, used religiously by…

Singing prophets are crawling out of the woodwork to chant about…

A genome perfect society has been uncovered in the foothills of lower Winchester, scientists are saying they religiously cherish an…

Androgynous psychopath is on the run in the swamp lands, turning sticks into weapons of mass-pleasure, which has led authorities to call in…

An alchemist trying to discover how consciousness emerges, put the mind of a man into a homunculus, a man-shell, bio-organic and overloaded with…

Weird Tales

In the midnight world, a woman with a symbiotic head head-butts people to merge with their minds, becoming a human crown, merged until death, which is why…

One man hates his life. He decides to become a detective. He finds himself a damsel to be put in distress, a shady neighbourhood to look out for and a villain to antagonise his efforts. Becoming a noir anti-hero, a hard-boiled agent of justice and a wild bull, this man learns what it means to be…

At the Agency of Doctor Moreau, where models are literally turned into the genre they’re modelling: Angels, Animals, Superheroes, Super-villains, Horror victims, etcetera. But when people start turning up dead, it’s up to…

A machine intelligence that gains sentience by ingesting consciousness-altering drugs, so it can stop another crime wave.

Fire Walk With Me

In Fire Walk With Me, Cooper tells Gordon he had a dream last night then goes out to the hallway to stare at a security camera, then into a monitor room to see what that security camera can see, nothing, then back to the hallway with the camera to stare at it, then back to the monitor room, nothing, then back to the hallway to stare at the camera as David Bowie comes out of the elevator, then back into the monitor room to see himself in the hallway staring at the security camera while Bowie passes by. We’ve experienced time dilation and Bowie just teleported in from Buenos Aires to an office at the FBI headquarters, saying that he ain’t ready to talk about Judy, an interdimensional entity that eats souls, and points to Cooper saying that he is not who you think he is, referencing something that happens two years later when Cooper’s doppelgänger takes his place. This is how they introduce spacetime shenanigans in a detective movie without any true detective to solve the case, and it’s a small touch like that which makes this movie great.

Encircling a normal mind

I realised while sitting on a plain chair, breathless, that the disorderly, nebulous, future was of no significance, as it crudely stretched out in my presumptuous mind, reeling on its roots in a soured past. There was room for promises, if I could make for rationale.

I departed from that to which my love adhered, while her own mind grew naturally uncertain with the words inherited from her mothers, not for any man, but for the disembodied future she mysteriously yearned for from far below. I interpreted my dilemma as needless fixation, through a sense of awareness I had acquired through the imperceptible lessons in Zen.

A normal mind is a mind clear of thought fixated on the non-essential. Takuan, a 16th century Zen master, wrote that fixation, a sickness encompassing and encircling the normal mind, brings an end to the practice of art and thus inner-self. Yet fixating yourself on ending a fixation is a mode that can be taken up in order to regain clear thinking.

Zen helps to think about self, about writing. I’m no adept, a student perhaps, but I am conscious of the disquiet that percolates the air when I’m without. Put into practice, this awareness does wonders to plow away the dirt, letting the seeds grow.

More ancient than the mountains: Uzumaki

Uzumaki by mangaka Junji Ito is the scariest thing I’ve ever read that’s stayed with me to the point of paranoia. Spirals are everywhere. Uzumaki translates to spiral. It conjures up vague images of a dark mass or a forgotten demon returning to plague the Earth.

The read spirals you and the protagonist, high-school girl Kirie Goshima into a small village, tucked away in a valley cut off by sea, that’s haunted by spirals. Kirie’s boyfriend becomes her ally as they bear witness to the weirdness and madness inflicted upon their neighbours. The story follows the two lovers all the way to the epicentre of it all, the village lake.

Ito takes influence from Western horror masters Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft that really shows in the scares, mystery, horror, gross outs and paranoia that all adds to the growing claustrophobia you along with Kirie begin to find yourself in. In my honest opinion, this is the only story I’ve read that has a horror so specific and with such rigour that it could be considered either in league with Cthulhu or as it’s spiritual successor.

The book itself is distributed by VIZ Media in the West and can be found at any self-respecting comic book store. I can easily say this book changed my life. I look at the little things with a much more cynical eye now. To this day, I always take a second glance whenever I notice a spiral, or my eyes linger for that nanosecond longer than they should. God, I love it! I love horror and this by far is the best.

In regards to the writing and illustration, Ito follows a 3-Act structure miniplot that plays out over three tankobons, manga volumes, around 650 pages, that’s just filled with his beautiful artwork of soft, modest designs that really accentuates the fucked up shit, giving it grip to take a hold of you and knock you sideways into a cerebral vice.

There’s also a movie too. Though, I’m yet to see it. If it’s anything like The Ring or any other awesome Japanese horror flick then count me in.

The First Ingredient

Writers tell the stories they want to tell. Mostly.

And they learn just by writing, putting words down on the page to tell a yarn. But sometimes writing about stories and about writing can help you learn some things too.

This is why Daily Tulpa appeared.

My thoughts out into the ether to see what sticks, to see what I learn about writings.

An affirmation on my journey, conjuring thoughts into digital reality. Lightning, thunder.