30 Rounds in a Banana/13 Points on a Bolt
Autopsy Submissions Are Open
(Altar to Evelyn Milquetoast, Patron Saint of Junkies, in her room, in the apartment we abandon tomorrow, Original image, Emil Ottoman, Cult of the Rainbow Rat, 2025)
SUBMISSION WINDOW FOR INVITATION TO AN AUTOPSY IS OPEN
From when this post drops at 6am CST US to 6pm CST US you are politely invited to send five pages of fiction to me and get put in for the lottery. Not like the Shirley Jackson story, mostly. But, the lottery to see which story gets an editorial Autopsy next.
Last week I started the experiment on a whim. This week it continued aside an unfolding tragedy and disaster. Next week We continue with the work, because that’s what we do.
Send 5 pages of your best, your worst, your darlings in need of slaughter, your confusions, your problem children, your conundrums, your stuck stories, and anything you want to have the possibility of getting an editorial pass during the submission window to emilottoman@gmail.com
Include AUTOPSY in all caps in the subject line, and include your Substack Handle so that I can give you the guest byline because I may be editing your work that week.
I will do my best to at least answer every email in as timely a manner as possible given the unfolding hell my family is living through. (More on this in the essay below)
Remember to follow instructions.
Conduct yourself professionally. Follow instructions, hit the window, do the subject, and you’ll be fine. If you do eventually want to pub, you’re going to have to follow a lot more seemingly obtuse instructions than these, I can tell you this much.
And so,
Thank you all for the warm reception and feedback. I’ll be activating the subscriber chat for general talk, direct inquiries, and whatever else I feel like fucking about with.
The Invitation to the Autopsy series will NEVER be paywalled.
But then,
I also have to thank the Substack fiction community for their support and generosity during a horrible crisis. We were meant to evac today but I realized I was having an all day panic attack freeze response and didn’t get anything moving until I ate 4 bars and managed to stop shaking.
We should aspire to not just come together in fits and spurts, but to create a broad multicellular mutual support network. I’m big on community building, and people rallying around some no name indie editor like myself who just showed up swaggering a while ago asking for help in a time of great need, and getting help, is an indication that mutual support networks, even when distributed, can work. I’ve proved this multiple times in multiple places.
They bring us together. A rising tide lifts all boats. You’re not fighting for a limited resource (audience) so stop complaining, write, and help when you can. I’m invariably reaching the point where I know some of you well enough I would gladly call you friends or give you 20 bucks no questions asked. But I’m a social super connector. I’m a systems node. Dunbar’s number doesn’t apply to me by several orders of magnitude. Hell, we’ve had our contentious moments but
was so kind to me I can’t even find it in my heart to be an asshole to him anymore.Sorry Jimmy, just can’t do it. Looking forward to your next piece.
HOWEVER/
There comes due a price for everything, and I’ve been considering a great many ideas and concepts. I see the best essayists on this platform running a train on deep subjects. But it’s late, I found a framing mechanism I like, I got a fuck off lot to say so please, take a seat at the far end of the room against the wall. Never mind it looks like a shooting gallery. Don’t mind the pockmarks in the concrete. No one’s been hit by a stray round yet. I just have a lot to say. So without further showmanship or carnival barking on my end, as long as you’re all seated with your drinks. Get comfortable.
Now sit still, I don’t write essays, I write panic attacks
(AK on the rug, all my fuckin drugs, original image, Emil Ottoman, 2025)
30ROUNDSINABANANA
30. THE THEATRE OF CRUELTY/ Antonin Artaud was a bad motherfucker. He said theater would ideally provoke, in his opinion, sensory and emotional responses so deeply gutting that they would break through the thin muslin of rationality and social norms.
Throw complacency out the window or shoot it in the head.
Force people to confront dark subversive and bleeding truths he saw as part of the firmament of humanity.
“Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them.”
— Lee Jamieson, Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice, Greenwich Exchange, 2007, p.23
He eschewed any conventional or normie narrative and supplanted it with grotesque and guttural imagery, actual physicality, harsh lights, claxons and disorienting sounds in a project to bypass intellectual safeguards and tumbledown the walls of the audience.
Nominally connected to the surrealists and Dada, The Theatre of Cruelty was a large part of the inspiration for the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou (the one with the eyeball scene.) But this wasn’t cruelty for its own sake, it wasn’t mindless. That would just be more shock in a time when the world was undergoing paroxysms of it right after The Great War.
No, he aimed for pure metaphysical cruelty. Strip away the audiences illusions, uncover the blood, guts, and raw psychic discomfort bubbling beneath the surface. Read up on him if you don’t know.
He wanted to put the audience standing in the middle of a room, the vortex he called it, surrounded by the players, absolutely giving them a precursor to a bad acid trip in an attempt to shock them awake from some deep societally proscribed slumber.
Unfortunately he only held one play, it ran for 17 engagements, and he considered it a failure. It was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley though, so that’s cool.
This bullet lodged in the concrete behind you will come up again later. I’m just giving context.
29. COMMUNITY BUILDING/ Since I’ve hit Substack Notes, which don’t pretend, is social media helping people find you, connect with you, and connect you to an audience. Love it or hate it, you gotta deal with it now. Some of us didn’t have audiences to port from other platforms, or had audiences impossible to port (try to get 30k people from a meme page to Substack and get back to me when your heart breaks.)
So I’ve noticed since I got here a vibe shift, and I’m not talking about the one the reactionaries and rightwing milk crickets are talkin’ bout, I’m talkin’ bout Substack Zone, Dark Tidings, Sum Flux, mutual support (big up to our Nine Story Hotel, I’ll be back soon baby, you’re my first love, you’re as special and ready to build community as Sci Friday and Macabre Monday.) This is self sorting.
Unless you’re not a pattern recognition machine with an amygdala damaged so bad you don’t look up worried for shooters on overwatch and have to know where every exit in a building is, you’ve got to see it.
connects to connects to and Sum Flux, and we got Monster Truck from it. Dark Tidings was a masterful fusillade of so many murderous birds. I hear whispers of published compilations but I ain’t sayin’ shit. That’s on paper. dropped a novel in a day, finished a novel in record time and Mars is Retrograded. DeepLeftAnalysis is smoking PCP and is writing things need written, and a fantastic poet too. If you don’t see emergent community building you’re blind.And then came my bullshit.
28. SPECTACLE/ We run on it. You’re here, you’re hot, you’re gone, you’re dead.
almost tapped on the platform when I called him out for copywriting against copywriting. He didn’t leave, thank god. He rebranded as the Talentless Writer because someone called him one in a thread after he cut a “writing/marketing guru” to pieces. Their fans don’t like this shit, for the record. Ask me about DeepLeftAnalysis and how people find my post every other day and call me a fucking moron without any surrounding context.Here’s a cheat code. Combine the spectacle with your abilities and you’re going to get on there consistently. Don’t get it confused. Spectacle doesn’t have to be loud. You can have low key spectacle. I showed up and started manic posting about charlatan’s selling overpriced pabulum to writers who need help, want guidance, want someone to read and pay attention to them, not some smiling face asking for fifty bucks for a sixty minute prerecorded video of their bright white teeth selling you the toxic positivity version of the craft, gaming shit with their thousands of paid checkmarks, up there. Not down in the trenches.
good news. We don’t NEED them. That’s the point of 29.
Oh, and then came MY bullshit.
27. TRAUMA PORNO/ Last week my world turned into a three ring circus of the attention economy, a perfect storm of fuck last year and fuck this year. A ceiling collapsing under fifty tons of snow pack, a client drought, moms back from her first vacation in ten years, fiancée with a cervical spine injury on workman’s comp and whole household running out of money fast.
I’ve done this before, what do I do? Beg, dance, act like the fact that this happened at the statistically worst time of the year is a shameful moral failing. Yes, I’m sorry I’m asking. Yes, I’m sorry our lives are suddenly fucked. Yes, I’m sorry. Yes thank you. Yes, I’m cutting my editorial rates (I should be raising them! Fuck, this is a disaster, emergency, I’ve had a sinus headache not yet clearing a week in. And thanks to the real ones who refuse to pay the discount. I’ve got contracts coming in and I may die under them.)
Everyone likes a deal, but everyone likes helping someone out; if you can do both and get something worth orders of magnitude more than they can afford to charge because they’re desperate, well, win win, right?
I’m still dancing for coin. We evac tomorrow. We still ain’t got enough money to get this done. Thank you for your generosity. Fuck you for your stinginess. I’ve had friends I know can barely afford it give me $400 they could probably have used for something else while millionaires I know have lit candle or sent thots and prayers.
Shit runs round.
I’m tired. It’s in my nature to share and I’m trying to SAVE MY HOUSEHOLD. I’ll return to this but for now.
Back to Artaud and the spectacle of trauma porno and begging (I’m not even going to talk about the tragedy of GofundMe, and I’ve written six successful campaigns for their shit platform.) Because today I woke up in a panic attack feeling stripped of my skin, nude and inhuman, covered in slime. I’m still mad. I’ll DIE MAD. So let’s talk about it in relation to the Theatre of Cruelty
SMASH THE SPECTACLE: Shock induction: Shift from a spectator mode to one of collective community responsibility (if one of us falls, we all fall) Run HARD on our SHARED HUMANITY.
WE ARE ALL VULNERABLE: Part of the Theatre of Cruelty was pointing out the web of connection we all share through human experience, basally. Empathy and objectification are near the same here. Or they can get mixed up real easy. But you could be here tomorrow. And trust me it sucks. And the ones who have been here, they’re the ones helpin’ the most. Things like this are a result of systemic failure cascades. We can all help out. (When I can, I’ll be the first to put up on my fuckin’ word.)
FUCK THIS, I’M INVERTING THE POWER DYNAMIC. I’m done with performative suffering. I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to use every sad trick I know to get someone to care, you should care because you’re getting something of value from me for free, and will continue to do so, and I’m human. Not a dancing trauma marionette. The commodification of my misery is literally something I can see in my bank account right now and measure against whether it’s enough money to survive until I move.
When I say it’s not, it’s not.
No one should have to feel like they need to do it. I’ve done it six times for others, a few times for myself, and I’ve spent YEARS of my life running cross country to help however I could. I have credit debt and one totaled Subaru Crosstrek to show for it.
26. END STAGE TERMINAL CAPITALIST ROT/ Can we start using this exact phrase. I’ve been trying to get it to catch for a decade and everyone just insists on the more genteel “late capitalism.” Fuck y’all, we’re in ROT. Call it what it is.
25. DANCING FOR HELP/ I’m tired. The attention economy cares about your need exactly as long as it takes for you to get annoying or until they feel assuaged for doing their part. I’m drained from doing this begging and carefully practicing my ballet on a razor’s edge for nearly a week. Just because you feel better doesn’t mean the need is over. I’m not going to dance and splay my guts after this, but I’m not shutting up until I can get my 73 year old Autistic ADHD mother and my beloved fiancée enough money to make this move. And the game is rigged. You got five bucks, pass the plate. I’ll do the same for you when the time comes and you need the same.
24. DYING IN AMERICA/ This came on the tail end of the worst two year of my life. I’m not going to go over Sarah/The Saint/Evelyn Milquetoast or her untimely suicide but I’ll say this, I’m fuckin’ tired. I got dead bodies stacked like cordwood behind me. I’m from the dope game. I quit counting overdoses sometime in 2015. Sarah rented out a room in my house. It’s turned into a shrine. This is the last place I have memories of seeing my best friend of 21 years. The last place we made a real memory. The last place she had refuge or shelter. Check this:
Her only sculpture, Narcan, because she worked at a needle exchange, her pipe, her keys to my house, her last pair of glasses before she got Lasik. A legendary jar full of nails. Fake poppies. My petrified dreadlocks wrapped in newspaper she’d been holding onto since 2012. It took a whole system to let her fall so far she ended up hanging from a door. I’m tired of the grief but it’s never going away. Put a bad word on her name and you’re taking your life into your own hands. This ceiling shit is compounding interest. I have to leave this place. Her last safe space. Her LAST SAFE SPACE.
I only figured out I was so fucked up about this today, along with mom, and I sobbed.
23. THE PROBLEM WITH THEM THAT GOT MONEY/ They ain’t givin’ their part. Like I say, I’ll give you my last dime. I always pay my hood tax. If I have ones and fives, they go to the people on the streets. Get ya licka fam. I don’t give a fuck. Stay warm. But if you ain’t coughin’ up to help your community and you have more than others, it’s your moral imperative to do what you can to help. I know VERY FEW people with money who do this. The rest of them just wanna die the richest motherfucker in the graveyard.
22. MY PAIN IS NOT YOUR CONTENT/ But it is. Sure you’re boosting the signal, but I can see who has given and who hasn’t. If you ain’t helpin’ your people, don’t bother boosting the signal. You’re worse than those motherfuckers gonna die the richest motherfucker in the graveyard. You want to APPEAR good. You have ten thousand subscribers? Oh, why thank you my liege. We’ll be down here in the trenches building the next thing and you’re going to miss it, I guarantee it.
21. THE PARADOX OF SELF IMMOLATION/ If you don’t dance like this though, see above. You die. Or you end up in a shelter, separated, on the street, you end up fucked.
20. WHAT THE ARTIST OWES SOCIETY/ The society I will use is the society of peers. You owe your peers as much support as they give you, you owe to share your knowledge, you owe your words for the public good, for the public bad, for the public to spit on. You owe more than you understand, and so do I. Go find the book by Lewis Hyde. It’s title is The Gift.
19. THE PRICE OF HONESTY/ I guess we’ll see at the end of this one depending on how it’s received.
18. RECIPROCITY AND MUTUALISM/ This is what I’m aiming for. This is communitas. I’m falling short, but I’m always going to be dying on the hill while trying to build a house on it.
17. THE FIGHT YOU ARE NOT FIGHTING/ Shut the fuck up about the Big Five. Their cachet is waning. Everyone claps when you get the contract, but no one remembers after your book sinks and you don’t earn out the advance. They are operating on a very brittle lottery system. I see a lot of egg head fuck “critique” and complaining about how nothing is big enough to fight them. You lack imagination. Fortune favors the bold. Quit pandering like the Big 5 mean shit outside of small circles and New York. You want a Booker Prize or you want people to remember your books? I’ve seen the stacks at the bookstore down the street. They’re an existential horror of titles you’ve never heard of whose authors you’ve never heard of won awards you’re very familiar with. I care about good literature, I’d agree with Blake Butler and most of my other author friends, the place that’s happening is indie and micropresses. Anthrogenic lit, new wave lit, and the abused term “alt-lit” which was a very specific thing after it was an already outdated term, all have it fucked up.
16. THE FIGHT YOU CANNOT WIN/ You cannot win against this system unless you create something new. They’re scraping Booktok for series to turn into media properties to carry them through the next decade. Look up Asterism books. Look up alternative distribution methods. Look up something distinctly outside your usual scope, or if it’s something you’re well aware of, consider talking about it.
15. THE FIGHT YOU CAN WIN/ The one with yourself. Keep writing. If you quit, they win. If they win, nothing changes. If nothing changes… Well, do you like how this feels, right here, right now? The fight you can win is the one with yourself. Mine is 20+ years in the offing but I’m about to the end of my rope. Not the one my friend hanged herself, but I wish I had that thing she wound round her neck because she’d want me to have it.
14. WHY WE FALTER/ This is a complex systems problem, but I show you as an immediately available example, MY LIFE. We falter because the system is designed to be near zero sum at all levels. This is why I emphasize community. This is why I have an apartment showing tomorrow and I’m writing this at one in the fucking morning. Because I have things to say.
13. THE CAPITALIST DEATH CULT KILLED MY BEST FRIEND/ I will never shut up about this, but we’re reaching a tipping point.
12. GRIEF THE LONG SLOW NEVERBYE/ Grief is something I’m going to be riffing on the rest of my life. Every single piece of writing since my best friend died has turned into something that has a serious theme of grief, a vein running through its core. Stories have warped themselves around this vein of fool’s gold. Somewhere she laughs at me for being a bitch.
11. CONFUSING PAIN WITH ENTERTAINMENT OR A HEARTENING STORY/ Every time you see a story about how a child has been gifted something local highschoolers made for them for a disability they weren’t receiving help with, that’s not a heartening story, it’s a failure of the entire system of how this country works. This includes the trauma and tragedy porno of my life, or anyone else going through the same. It’s an embarrassment to our collective humanity and we should be ashamed we’ve allowed this to happen while billionaires EXIST. Where did we fuck up this badly?
10. RAGE: TRAGEDY AS CONTENT/ Just look at the news. Now close the news. now look around your neighborhood. Fuck those people over there for a second. I know you want to help, but like, what are you doing locally? If not locally, what are you doing with the unfolding distant tragedy to make it not just content? I know hippies when North Carolina flooded, they hit the area like a bomb to work soup kitchens and shit. This is an extreme example, but how you livin’ fam?
9. WHAT WE OWE OUR FELLOW MAN/ Dignity.
8. THE HUMANITY LOST IN THE SAUCE/ Every time you argue with some idiot on the internet you know is engaging you in bad faith, imagine you have a humanity score, and by continuing to do so, you’re depleting it. Every time you run into something that can deplete your humanity, think for three seconds before engaging.
7. ESTABLISHING AUTHORITY ISN’T JUST FOR FICTION/ It’s for begging for coin to save your family too. Ask
, he’ll tell you all about it. The authority, “I’m going to be homeless, the only thing that can help is money.” There. Established in one line. Say it in one line and you won’t get shit. Make it sound like you’re not so mad and gutted and confused and scared and ugly crying, make it socially acceptably tragic, and you’ll maybe get help.6. THE KILLING MOON/ Is a fantastic song.
5. REALITY (FINITE AND INFINITE GAMES)/ Are you playing a finite game, or an infinite game? A finite game has well defined boundaries, rules, objectives, an end state, players, and competition. A finite game has a win scenario. It is by definition constricting. An infinite game involves continued pursuit for play in an open environment for the sake of play, involves no win state, and is continuous. Consider if you’re playing one or the other, then find James P Carst’s book on it, apply all the ideas of Finite and Infinite games to everything written before this point.
4. PLAY TO WIN/ Until we create something better, define winning for yourself, and play to win. Play dirty. Play cheap. Play like your life depends on it. Mine does.
3. FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME/ Everything is a game. Writing is a game. You can conceptualize of everything as a game. I’m not suggesting we gamify more bullshit. I’m just saying if you’re writing, you have to be in it for the love of the game, because money comes slow unless you’re lucky. And avoid acts of anthropocentric climate change that send your kitchen ceiling crashing into your fucking kitchen under 50,000 lbs of snow and ice. Just, there’s a little insider advice. Trust me.
2. TIGERSTRIPE CAMO/ I used to live in Oakland. I wore tigerstripe camo and a red Adidas track jacket hoodie for years, like a uniform. I lived in West Oakland, past Ghost town, in Dogtown, on a blood block. It pays to know your surroundings. This goes for on the internet as well. And on Substack especially I learned. There’s no other place like this. Grow it into something better than they want to make it. They’re going got have new features, they’re going to add more social bullshit. Use these features wrong. Subvert their intentions. Find novel ways to break what they want out of you. Experimentation leads to innovation. If it causes Substack stress, even better. They’ll know they’re fucking with their base.
1. “CHALK IT UP TO THE GAME PUSSIES, YOU AIN’T BOUT THAT LIFE”/ RIP KC Chris. Road dog for so long. Dead after Covid from an opiate relapse after three years sober. But this point is: find your tribe.
INTERMEZZO
Your ears are ringing, concrete dust hangs in the air. No one has been hit by a stray bullet. Ok, now have a drink from the water bottle sitting at your feet. Good. Everybody done? Now take a big breath, and hold it until the last line of the song is done, or your ears stop ringing.
(Grateful Dead Wings and Anxiety Vibes, Emil Ottoman, original image, 2025)
13POINTSONALIGHTNINGBOLT
1. RADIOHEAD - JUST/ FJM - DISAPPOINTING DIAMONDS/ You do it to yourself you do, and that’s what really hurts because disappointing diamonds are the rarest of them all. And a love that lasts forever really can't be that special. Sure we know our roles, and how it's supposed to go. Does everybody have to be the greatest story ever told? - The last song Sarah listened to the night she hanged herself was Disappointing Diamonds, on repeat.
2. ST. STEPHEN/ Saint Stephen will remain, all he’s lost he shall regain, Seashore washed by the suds and foam. Been here so long, he’s got to calling it home. There’s a message in this that is just for me.
3. SUBSTACK IS A HYPEROBJECT/ No further explanation, but you cannot comprehend the entirety of it in mind, so it is a hyperobject.
4. FJM - JOSH TILLMAN AND THE STORY OF THE ACCIDENTAL DOSE/ If you warp the lyrics to this song, from his recovery and finding himself album, one year too late for Sarah, but if you change one lyric it sums up part of her tragic downward spiral perfectly. “I was treating acid with, anxiety.” Switch that for “I was treating ketamine with, anxiety.” Her nose was hollowed out completely by the time she took the trust fall. I wonder if she was praying? Born a Catholic, die on your knees.
5. THEORY IS GREAT UNTIL YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE/ I see a lotta shitty theory on substack that just doesn’t line up with reality, or it sounds like it’s coming out the brain of some political incel who just recently discovered the magical combination of speed and dissociative sedatives.
6. THE ESTIMATED PROPHET: HONEYBEAR REPRISE/ “California, preaching on the burning shore. California, I'll be knocking on the golden door. Like an angel standing in a shaft of light. Rising up to paradise, I know I'm gonna shine
My time coming any day, don't worry 'bout me, no. It's gonna be just like they say, them voices tell me so. Seems so long I felt this way, and time sure passin' slow. Still I know I lead the way, they tell me where I go, oh, honeybear, honeybear, honeybear Ooh-ooh. Mascara blood Ash and cum On the Rorschach sheets where we make love.
Honeybear, honeybear, honeybear Ooh-ooh. Fuck the world damn straight malaise. It may be just us who feel this way
But don't ever doubt this, my steadfast conviction. My love, you're the one I want to watch the ship go down with. The future can't be real, I barely know how long a moment is unless we're naked getting high on the mattress while the global market crashes as death fills the streets we're garden variety oblivious. You grab my hand and say in I-told-you-so voice "It's just how we expected."
Everything is doomed, and nothing will be spared. But I love you, honeybear Ooh-Ooh Ooh-Ooh. Honeybear, honeybear, honeybear Ooh-Ooh
You're bent over the altar and the neighbors are complaining that the misanthropes next door are probably conceiving a Damian. Don't they see the darkness rising?
Good luck figuring oblivion. We're getting out now while we can.
7. SUBSTACK VIZ SOCIAL MEDIA: THE THING OF TWO THINGS/ A thing can be two things. I’m saying this repeatedly hoping it sticks in someone’s head.
8. REPETITION IS THE MOTHER OF ALL KNOWLEDGE/ I had a Russian teacher who gave me this to chew on when I was in sixth grade. It took me too long to figure out the point is you have to learn from the repetition. That was the point. Improvement. I guess I got it though, it’s served me well. So, keep writing. But for god’s sake learn from your fuckups.
9. SUGAREE/ When they come to take you down. When they bring that wagon around. When they come to call on you. And drag your poor body down.
Just one thing I ask of you. Just one thing for me. Please forget you knew my name. My darlin' Sugaree.
Shake it, shake it Sugaree. Just don't tell them that you know me. Shake it, shake it Sugaree. Just don't tell them that you know me.
This song is about snitching. Don’t be a fuckin’ snitch.
10. THERE IS ONLY THE WORK: FJM Q4/ Simone writes little love, much consequence. Lest the theatre's how you pay the rent. A new work of some semi-memoir sits. Inside the weekend book editors desk.
And while they have not mentioned it. She must watch roses get thrown at less. Oh, the indignity.
It was just the thing for their Q4. "Deeply funny" was the rave refrain. It was just the thing for their Q4. It'll be on stands before the holidays
Unless you’re writing fiction, if you’re criticizing a shit system but begging to get in or wondering how we shall ever change the situation we’re in. You sound like this.
11. THE COSMIC JELLYFISH, THE TEAPOT, AND THE ELEPHANT: SHE CLEANS UP/
“I was born with this teapot on my head the elephant said to the Jellyfish. The Jellyfish liked the elephant’s stories. They were the best of friends.” This was on Sarah’s desk the night she hanged herself. She was the elephant. I was always the red teapot. I had a vision that Mary of Magdalene saw the future that awaits just before good Friday eve. Figured the wages of salvation were a little too steep
Said no one's fucking with my baby, lord, and got on to the teeth. Cleanin’ up.
I know just how this thing ends. Hallelujah, guess we gave the karmic wheel a spin, oh, yeah I know just how this thing ends. The aggriever goes aggressor and we do it all again YEAH.
12. HE’S GONE : NIHIL PERDITI/ Nihil Perditi is the family tattoo. It means “I have lost nothing.” When family dies in Grateful Dead land they play the song He’s Gone. It’s about someone who stole a lot of money from the Grateful Dead and then disappeared. It never appeared on a studio album. It’s about murdering someone who stole from you. Making it ironic that it’s played when a member of the family dies.
Rat in a drain ditch, caught on a limb, you know better but I know him. Like I told you, what I said, steal your face right off your head.
Now he's gone, now he's gone, Lord he's gone, he's gone. Like a steam locomotive, rollin' down the track. He's gone, he's gone and nothin's gonna bring him back, he's gone.
Nine mile skid on a ten mile ride, hot as a pistol but cool inside. Cat on a tin roof, dogs in a pile. Nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile.
Now he's gone, now he's gone, Lord he's gone, he's gone. Like a steam locomotive, rollin' down the track. He's gone, he's gone and nothin's gonna bring him back, he's gone.
My rough estimate over the years is I’ve called hundreds of people at least thirty or more times to tell them a friend of ours has died. Some of my friends have me in their phone as “the grim reaper” Some have PTSD from me only calling when someone dies.
11. FUCK YOU PAY ME/ The entire point of this I’ve been leading up to in a ball of confusion is I’m not dancing and splaying my guts publicly anymore. My family’s predicament is ongoing, not getting much better, and I feel sucked dry over it.
The Levee didn’t break in the kitchen, the ceiling is still barely holding on, but we have to evac tomorrow. I share by nature, but I’ve not experienced anything akin to this. It feels like it’s turned into sick spectacle, causing me the sort of gut feeling of being on display every time I mention that we’re fucked right now. It’s not something I’d anticipated. Just like the community support. But the fact that the community support evaporates every twelve hours or is expended from crisis fatigue is disheartening. I’ve run campaigns on GoFundMe that lasted six months and were gruesome slogs. I’m tired of dancing.
I’ll continue to share what’s going on with my situation and my family, but it’s going behind a paywall.
You can have everything about writing that I know for free, one week at a time.
But if you want access to my innards, you have to pay.
I’m inverting the concept of monetization on the platform.
Here, have the valuable things for free.
But for me and the bloody feet I’m walking through the snow on, you must pay.
If something is free on the internet, especially something having to do with social media. Remember, you’re the product.
I’m the product. And for greater access past craft and fiction, you’ll pay for access, or you can filter feed off the professional services.
-Emil Ottoman
You got me.
Imagine that very American phrase, uttered in a (mostly) well-spoken British accent.
This all needs to brew in my mind for a lot longer, so for now I will just say "thank you".