Nigel, A few notes on The Horror.

[Doktor Howl]

So, Nigel, that building at 10th Avenue and SE Washington that has the loading docks facing the street, you know the one I'm talking about, has a plastic shed on the outside between two of the docks?  Ever notice how that building never actually has trucks in front of it in the daytime?  Sometimes at night, but the drivers never get out.  Someone unloads them from inside the building, no people are ever outside, during the whole process.

One day soon, Nigel, the police are going to go to that building, looking for drugs.  They won't find any, but what they DO find will be the scandal of the decade, and loads of people will think the people running that building are the BIG conspiracy (In fact, the people running the building DO think they're part of the BIG conspiracy)...But they're not.  It's awful and it's gruesome, but it's just another little consiracy, just another smile pile of bones.

Because Portland, like Tucson and New York and San Francisco and every other major city, is built on crime, on a foundation of bones of those who were murdered to make The City happen.  The principle difference is that New York and Tucson are comfortable with this, and San Francisco and Portland do everything they can to pretend it never happens/happened.  Just like they pretend that the tunnels under Portland are a myth, and that nobody ever disappears into them.

But of course they do, and some people in Portland think THAT is part of the BIG conspiracy.  But it isn't.  It's horrifying, and when the truth comes out the police and the National Guard will spend some time down there, and they won't be bringing prisoners up...No, they'll come up alone, and they'll all have FOIA documents they'll be forced to sign...Not really required, because they'll never talk about it and if they did, nobody would believe them...Just another broken cop drunkenly raving about some fantastical shit from a bad B movie.

There'll be rumors, of course, but they'll all be about aliens and monsters and shit, and the truth will be rather more prosaic (though just as grim), more like the results of a couple of bad decisions on the part of a certain pastor some 3 generations ago.  But that's not the point.  This event won't even be the result of a conspiracy, but of course some people will believe that it is.

Because the future isn't about conspiracies, Nigel, so much as it's about weird beliefs resulting in bad planning and small time criminal operations gone horribly, horribly wrong.  It's also about the same short-sighted thinking resulting in horrible, Godawful fuckups like the Deepwater Horizon and what's happening 40 feet below your streets.  The future isn't an explosion, but rather a slow burn, where fresh events are scrawled on horror's scrolls slowly enough that most people survive, but fast enough that the weirdness and horror are buried under the latest speculation on Lady Gaga's actual gender.

The people in charge, obviously, WANT you to believe in conspiracies, so that you don't pay attention to what's actually happening...Which, of course, is a conspiracy in itself.  Rabbit holes can be like that.

They have lied to us all, Nigel.

But I tell you The Truth.

That's what I do.

I am Doktor Howl.

[Doktor Howl]

Hey, LMNO...There used to be a place called Scollay Square in Boston.  It existed from 1838-1962, and while originally it was a center of abolitionist activity, it changed and was later full of colorful people who did some very naughty things, for a very, very long time.  One day in the 1960s it mysteriously burned down - the whole neighborhood - and 20,000 people were relocated.  They ploughed the whole thing under and built your government center over it.

I wonder if any traces of it remain?

[Doktor Howl]

On the lighter side, Tucson has a Chinese restaurant/noodle factory that has no dumpster.

Never eat at a restaurant that doesn't have a dumpster.  Something's not right.

Just thought I'd mention that.

[Adios]

On the lighter side, Tucson has a Chinese restaurant/noodle factory that has no dumpster.

Never eat at a restaurant that doesn't have a dumpster.  Something's not right.

Just thought I'd mention that.

[LMNO]

Well Dok, the train that runs under government center has never quite worked right, and the walls of the underground station are always leaking something foul.  I'll see if I can do some spelunking, and let you know what I find.

[Doktor Howl]

Well Dok, the train that runs under government center has never quite worked right, and the walls of the underground station are always leaking something foul.  I'll see if I can do some spelunking, and let you know what I find.

Don't go alone.  In fact, bring a Black dude, just in case.

Dok,
Knows that there are rules to this sort of thing.

[LMNO]

I'll make him wear a red shirt, too.

[Richter]

Having walked a good piece of the North End, I almost would expect it was still there.  Most places around it still retain a hint of the old feel, the buildings darken and age a bit as you walk off that side of the Commons.  There's the old stone church, which would be perfectly at home in Providence.  It seems to loom a bit, an sunlight never seems to reach the few ancient graves out front.  All the markers are new England slate,slowly beign worn this and illegible by the dour rain that washes over them season by season.  Government center sits upon it all like a cap.  A steel plate set grandly upon the scarred scalp, a proud scab shot into the earth with support and mass transit tunnels.  It's all set on the original island, if I'm not mistaken.  No fill underneath it except what sins they buried to set up the place.  There's bedrock there, and anything there above that wasn't fit to wipe away.  (Certainly, it was no clean wipe.  Some things are never done to completion, especially where big fat contracts are involved.)

Boston is an old city, a prejudiced city, but for all that also a good city.  The parks, the arcades, the streets and the venues, it feels overwhelmingly well executed and safe.  There's an expectation hanging over it, like the expectation to concept drawings of a new public park.  It all looks like the rare shot of Earth in "Star Trek", clean, safe, and utopian.  I sit and relax on its surface sometiems and reflect, this may be one of civilzation's high water marks.  Will it last?  Will it decrease and fade out?  No trace left on the surface of the people pushed out, of the burning and rebuilding.  Like many others, this is a city on a hill, but it is no kingdom of conscience.  It will crop up eventually, only after it's old enough to call "archeology", and then they'll see what my father's father's father did to theirs.

Then we'll have casinos.

[Doktor Howl]

Interestingly enough, it only took me 10 minutes to find some horrible shit about Boston...Portland took a little longer.

Now I'm interested, though, and I think I'm going to do a little digging on other cities, just to see what horrible shit lies underneath.

I'm not going to bother with London (except for that "lost" river), or New York, at least not yet, because the sheer volume of awful shit would take years to wade through.

[Adios]

Got me interested as well.

[Doktor Howl]

Got me interested as well.

Every city, every small town, hamlet, and thorpe has it's dirty little secrets, it's horrors painted over and largely forgotten.  No matter how small the town you live in is, there's something awful in its past, and more than likely in its present.

You just have to find it.

[Richter]

Check out Worcester too.  There's a whole industrial revolution canal that's covered over now, poorly disguised missile silos, and a whole bunch of urban legends about the area around the airport.

[Adios]

Got me interested as well.

Every city, every small town, hamlet, and thorpe has it's dirty little secrets, it's horrors painted over and largely forgotten.  No matter how small the town you live in is, there's something awful in its past, and more than likely in its present.

You just have to find it.

What type of search string are you using?

[Doktor Howl]

Check out Worcester too.  There's a whole industrial revolution canal that's covered over now, poorly disguised missile silos, and a whole bunch of urban legends about the area around the airport.

Will do.

I think I need to dig some of this shit up, because you really can't make educated guesses about the future, without knowing how weird the past was.

[Doktor Howl]

Got me interested as well.

Every city, every small town, hamlet, and thorpe has it's dirty little secrets, it's horrors painted over and largely forgotten.  No matter how small the town you live in is, there's something awful in its past, and more than likely in its present.

You just have to find it.

What type of search string are you using?

I'm using a variety of sources, some IRL and some internet.  The fastest way to find weird shit is to search your city on wikipedia, look for odd things, or things that don't exist anymore, and then start google searching that item.

But if you really want to have fun with it, you're going to have to do a little legwork of one kind or another.  For example, I know that bad things happened in Scollay Square in Boston - or at least it had a reputation for that - but I'm not precisely sure WHAT was going on.  I'm going to find out, of course, because now I'm curious.