"I remember what I said, those months ago. I didn't realize you would take it so seriously, I was only joking.
I know you're taking me, and soon, too. Can't you just let up a little bit between now and then? I need to see that look on a face when they look at me, I need to hear that tone, those words, leave a pair of lips when they speak to me. I would throw almost anyone under the bus that you drive, almost anyone. Just leave him, and the little one, and her, and theirs, leave them out of it as well. Leave them for the time it takes, and it will be such a short time. There are so many others you can focus on, and your reach is long and cruel. I dream of what you'll do when you find them. And you'll find them all, one day at a time, and with all the time to find them in. But please, it's just such a short time, grant me this last little mercy.
Please."
A frightened Tucsonite, taking a big chance by attracting attention to herself, and begging pointlessly to the God-city for mercy.
Whoa.
This is good. Very good.
I think we've all felt like that at least once. Some of us, a few times, or a few hundred times.
Jeepers Creepers! How do you appease a God-city when it hungers?
As far as I know (I was really pillzed up last night, and in a different space), you can't. You just take it in the ass without lube until it's finished, which even when you're expecting it, that is not much consolation.
I think I'm going to start carrying a first aid kit with me.
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 14, 2011, 10:54:06 PM
Jeepers Creepers! How do you appease a God-city when it hungers?
Tucson? Heh, the best you can do is hope it lands on someone else.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 15, 2011, 05:52:30 AM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 14, 2011, 10:54:06 PM
Jeepers Creepers! How do you appease a God-city when it hungers?
Tucson? Heh, the best you can do is hope it lands on someone else.
See, New York felt like it had a plan to get everyone, right in a row, but it had people lined up in its own way. Boston felt like it was waiting to leap out and smash someone into the pavement and then fade into black leaving a red smear and manic giggles behind. Albuquerque just waited, period, to see who fell over and who slipped through the cracks and those it swallowed. Chicago was actively attacking everyone all the time, in tiny ways, wearing them down one grain of skin at a time.
And I was only passing through those places.
The most experience I have had with a city was Davenport, Iowa and it was sulky, petulant and lazy. It reeked stagnation and it seeped into everyone's pores until they leaked stagnation out of every crevice. But it wasn't actively out to get anyone. Just hold them still long enough for the algae to creep up out of the river and cover them.
Tucson sounds plain
vicious.
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 15, 2011, 06:01:02 AM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 15, 2011, 05:52:30 AM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 14, 2011, 10:54:06 PM
Jeepers Creepers! How do you appease a God-city when it hungers?
Tucson? Heh, the best you can do is hope it lands on someone else.
See, New York felt like it had a plan to get everyone, right in a row, but it had people lined up in its own way. Boston felt like it was waiting to leap out and smash someone into the pavement and then fade into black leaving a red smear and manic giggles behind. Albuquerque just waited, period, to see who fell over and who slipped through the cracks and those it swallowed. Chicago was actively attacking everyone all the time, in tiny ways, wearing them down one grain of skin at a time.
And I was only passing through those places.
The most experience I have had with a city was Davenport, Iowa and it was sulky, petulant and lazy. It reeked stagnation and it seeped into everyone's pores until they leaked stagnation out of every crevice. But it wasn't actively out to get anyone. Just hold them still long enough for the algae to creep up out of the river and cover them.
Tucson sounds plain vicious.
Tucson is a bad country song. No, scratch that, it's the allosaurus of American cities, in a nation of fat, slow stegosauruses.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 15, 2011, 06:04:17 AM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 15, 2011, 06:01:02 AM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 15, 2011, 05:52:30 AM
Quote from: Cardinal Pizza Deliverance. on May 14, 2011, 10:54:06 PM
Jeepers Creepers! How do you appease a God-city when it hungers?
Tucson? Heh, the best you can do is hope it lands on someone else.
See, New York felt like it had a plan to get everyone, right in a row, but it had people lined up in its own way. Boston felt like it was waiting to leap out and smash someone into the pavement and then fade into black leaving a red smear and manic giggles behind. Albuquerque just waited, period, to see who fell over and who slipped through the cracks and those it swallowed. Chicago was actively attacking everyone all the time, in tiny ways, wearing them down one grain of skin at a time.
And I was only passing through those places.
The most experience I have had with a city was Davenport, Iowa and it was sulky, petulant and lazy. It reeked stagnation and it seeped into everyone's pores until they leaked stagnation out of every crevice. But it wasn't actively out to get anyone. Just hold them still long enough for the algae to creep up out of the river and cover them.
Tucson sounds plain vicious.
Tucson is a bad country song. No, scratch that, it's the allosaurus of American cities, in a nation of fat, slow stegosauruses.
Feed the fucking poisoned tacos.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 15, 2011, 06:04:17 AM
No, scratch that, it's the allosaurus of American cities, in a nation of fat, slow stegosauruses.
THAT is a brilliant way of saying it.
Quote from: Jenkem and Tomahawks on May 15, 2011, 04:43:24 AM
As far as I know (I was really pillzed up last night, and in a different space), you can't. You just take it in the ass without lube until it's finished, which even when you're expecting it, that is not much consolation.
Yeah.
You live through it. Because They WANT you to kill yourself, or somebody else, or become a junkie or an incoherent babbling mental case or a wino passed out in his own piss and vomit beside the dumpster, so they can tsk-tsk and say "See? We were right." That's the whole point.
Quote from: Anna Mae Bollocks on May 15, 2011, 09:37:59 PM
Quote from: Jenkem and Tomahawks on May 15, 2011, 04:43:24 AM
As far as I know (I was really pillzed up last night, and in a different space), you can't. You just take it in the ass without lube until it's finished, which even when you're expecting it, that is not much consolation.
Yeah.
You live through it. Because They WANT you to kill yourself, or somebody else, or become a junkie or an incoherent babbling mental case or a wino passed out in his own piss and vomit beside the dumpster, so they can tsk-tsk and say "See? We were right." That's the whole point.
The concept of a They does not exist in the Religion of Tucson (would that we were so lucky to have a They to point at). The following is the cration myth, the original scripture, the Book of Genesis of Tucson, THE BEGINNING of the God-City, and Eris' adopted holy land.
QuoteThere is a reason Tucson is a horrible place. The land itself is sentient. It is angry. It hates us all.
The land beneath Tucson was once beneath a great sea. And it slept deeply in the cool and the dark. The seas receded, and the land's dreams became broken. The sun beat down, and the land grew fitful. The wind blew across it, and the land's surface became dry. The Heat came, and the land awoke.
It was angry, for it wanted to return to the quiet and constant night it once had. New kinds of life sprung into being, and the land became angrier still. When man came to build his cities, the land was wrathful, and drove him to insanity, but man would not – could not – leave. The land wanted man to pay for the scars he had put upon it, and would not allow him to leave. It wanted him to pay.
It took his dreams and broke them, as its own dreams were once broken. It took his will and crushed it. It dangled escape in front of him, only to snatch it away at the last second. And man became lost, there in the desert, though he did not realize it. And it gave the land grim satisfaction to cause man great suffering. And man multiplied, and the land became more enraged and more delighted, had more lives to destroy.
It still yearns for sleep, the land. Until then it will take we who remain and play with us as the dog plays with the rat – shredding us to bits, leaving us when there is nothing left of us. The land is angry. It is joyful. It hates us all.
Quote from: Jenkem and Tomahawks on May 15, 2011, 09:52:17 PM
Quote from: Anna Mae Bollocks on May 15, 2011, 09:37:59 PM
Quote from: Jenkem and Tomahawks on May 15, 2011, 04:43:24 AM
As far as I know (I was really pillzed up last night, and in a different space), you can't. You just take it in the ass without lube until it's finished, which even when you're expecting it, that is not much consolation.
Yeah.
You live through it. Because They WANT you to kill yourself, or somebody else, or become a junkie or an incoherent babbling mental case or a wino passed out in his own piss and vomit beside the dumpster, so they can tsk-tsk and say "See? We were right." That's the whole point.
The concept of a They does not exist in the Religion of Tucson (would that we were so lucky to have a They to point at). The following is the cration myth, the original scripture, the Book of Genesis of Tucson, THE BEGINNING of the God-City, and Eris' adopted holy land.
QuoteThere is a reason Tucson is a horrible place. The land itself is sentient. It is angry. It hates us all.
The land beneath Tucson was once beneath a great sea. And it slept deeply in the cool and the dark. The seas receded, and the land's dreams became broken. The sun beat down, and the land grew fitful. The wind blew across it, and the land's surface became dry. The Heat came, and the land awoke.
It was angry, for it wanted to return to the quiet and constant night it once had. New kinds of life sprung into being, and the land became angrier still. When man came to build his cities, the land was wrathful, and drove him to insanity, but man would not – could not – leave. The land wanted man to pay for the scars he had put upon it, and would not allow him to leave. It wanted him to pay.
It took his dreams and broke them, as its own dreams were once broken. It took his will and crushed it. It dangled escape in front of him, only to snatch it away at the last second. And man became lost, there in the desert, though he did not realize it. And it gave the land grim satisfaction to cause man great suffering. And man multiplied, and the land became more enraged and more delighted, had more lives to destroy.
It still yearns for sleep, the land. Until then it will take we who remain and play with us as the dog plays with the rat – shredding us to bits, leaving us when there is nothing left of us. The land is angry. It is joyful. It hates us all.
Ah, I see now.
Shoulda known...I went to AZ one, a long time ago. If you found a puddle (this is rare), there were 13 frogs in it. If you found a tree, there were 20 people under it. Only well-to-do people had a lawn. I went to a bar in Windon or Wickenburg, one of those, and there was a big stain on the ceiling. They told me it was from a guy who sat at the bar and blew his brains out. They left it like that.
I've read that the desert used to be a shortgrass prairie, but the cattlemen ran their herds across it and fucked it up. The land hasn't forgotten that, either.
I love Tucson.
Me too. I love it, and I hate it.
On a certain level, Tuscon is like a small town. I remember a bunch of people carrying on about how Linda Ronstandt was from there.
Who gives a fuck?
One of the things few people know, even those poor infected souls who are trapped there, is that Tucson is actually a fungus. Not the buildings, of course, and not the people... well, not exactly. But the entity that is Tucson, that which gives the City its character, that which its denizens instinctively know can hear their prayers, can feel their breath and their fear late at night when the city grows chilly with the clear snap of the desert... that entity is wound in tender filaments, invisible to the naked eye, through the soil below the City, and over time, every structure, every machine, and every living thing is impregnated with the entity of Tucson. That's why you can't stay there too long.
It takes a few weeks to take hold, and if you get out of there in time the first creeping rhizomorphs, separated from the vastness of the mother, will die without the victim... or supplicant... noticing much more than a curious twitchy anxiety. Once they are established, though, the infected creature can't go too far from the mother without discomfort. The rhizomorphs inextricably entwined through their tissues start to protest and eventually, with enough time and distance, to die, and it creates a burning, jittery itch that most people mistake for madness. Those who try to leave either seek relief by returning to Tuscon, or become the walking weird... burned out, rambling husks of people, playing visions of horror only they can see behind their staring, dilated pupils. The tendrils that once were part of them are long gone, and can never be replaced.
Even a return to Eris' beloved Holy City can't restore them... they can be reinfected, but the damage caused by the death of the first spiderweb-fine network that inhabited them cannot be undone. Many do return, though, and you can see them shambling through the City, preaching their apocalyptic visions to anyone close enough to overhear their slurred, incoherent murmurs. They are trapped... but they are also virtually immortal, for when their human bodies die, if they are fortunate enough to be interred rather than cremated, they will be joined with the mother, for as long as She lives.
It's unsure how old Tucson is, but some legends claim that it was already present, though much smaller, when human beings first colonized the habitable areas fringing the Sonoran Desert over ten thousand years ago. When the Natives speak about the land having a spirit, they aren't fucking around.
Every twenty years or so, Tucson fruits, and releases her spores.
shit yeah
Holy fuck, Nigel.
I'm trying to decide if that's horrifying, awesome, or both...
I've been to Tucson. I've seen. :)
The creepy part is that there actually seems to be something to it.
People stay, or they go back. Even if they have it made someplace else, they'll come back to live in a camper shell or a trailer with no electricity in the fucking desert.
Bump
I totally forgot the Tucson as a fungus myth was in a Fracture thread. Glad you found it. :D
Thanks, me too!
HA! Found it.
"Oh my god.
Oh my god, will you just SHUT THE HELL UP.
I can't fucking take this shit, not today. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.
I JUST
FUCKING HELL SHUT SHUUT SHUUUUUUUUT U UUUP!"
An informal prayer to The City's sirens.
I smell "Book of Tuscon"
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 23, 2012, 09:39:46 PM
Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on February 23, 2012, 09:12:27 PM
I smell "Book of Tuscon"
Careful, mister.
There has been a call for this, it's true.
I would posit, though, that it be relegated to restricted access until the would-be reader has proven that he has access to large quantities of medication. There aren't really that many light-hearted Tucson writings.
Quote from: Sister Fracture on February 23, 2012, 09:43:10 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 23, 2012, 09:39:46 PM
Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on February 23, 2012, 09:12:27 PM
I smell "Book of Tuscon"
Careful, mister.
There has been a call for this, it's true.
I would posit, though, that it be relegated to restricted access until the would-be reader has proven that he has access to large quantities of medication. There aren't really that many light-hearted Tucson writings.
Also, if you look too long into Tucson, Tucson looks into you.
And then it all ends in tears.
Sometimes not even tears. Just a spiraling loss of what is real and what is fiction.
I think "The Book of Tuscon" would need to be handled with a heavy dose of Lovecraft/Robert W. Chambers style.
The sort of thing where nobody who's directly read out of it is anything resembling reliable witness anymore so all the records are horrible anecdotes and observations of the effects it's had and the implication that being curious about it is evidence that it's already got its hooks in your brain and is trying to reel you in.
Quote from: CorbeauEtRenard on February 23, 2012, 10:49:46 PM
I think "The Book of Tuscon" would need to be handled with a heavy dose of Lovecraft/Robert W. Chambers style.
The sort of thing where nobody who's directly read out of it is anything resembling reliable witness anymore so all the records are horrible anecdotes and observations of the effects it's had and the implication that being curious about it is evidence that it's already got its hooks in your brain and is trying to reel you in.
But it's not like that. It's TOO real.
I think there's a lot of potential in the idea, especially with the whole Giffords thing. It could be tacky and tasteless, but a lot of first generation spags were into all the JFK insanity and shoggoths in the pentagon type stuff.
I really hope that people kept copies of their letters that Nigel requested. We need more content, but there's a good start.
"The Book of Portland" is also on the horizon, what with the bridges and the Topof the Bottom.
Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on February 23, 2012, 11:16:40 PM
I think there's a lot of potential in the idea, especially with the whole Giffords thing. It could be tacky and tasteless, but a lot of first generation spags were into all the JFK insanity and shoggoths in the pentagon type stuff.
The Giffords thing was a better representation of Tucson than JFK. Guy heard voices, said he was going to kill someone. Everyone ignored him. Then he killed a bunch of people, and wounded Giffords.
There was never any mystery about it, no conspiracy. Just a crazy guy. Just a man off his meds, who listened to the people in his head who told him to Make Things Right. Just a tiny sniff of Tucson, just a pinch between cheek and gum.
And the also-rans for the last election circled like vultures, but that's only to be expected.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 24, 2012, 02:15:28 PM
Quote from: Queen Gogira Pennyworth, BSW on February 23, 2012, 11:16:40 PM
I think there's a lot of potential in the idea, especially with the whole Giffords thing. It could be tacky and tasteless, but a lot of first generation spags were into all the JFK insanity and shoggoths in the pentagon type stuff.
The Giffords thing was a better representation of Tucson than JFK. Guy heard voices, said he was going to kill someone. Everyone ignored him. Then he killed a bunch of people, and wounded Giffords.
There was never any mystery about it, no conspiracy. Just a crazy guy. Just a man off his meds, who listened to the people in his head who told him to Make Things Right. Just a tiny sniff of Tucson, just a pinch between cheek and gum.
And the also-rans for the last election circled like vultures, but that's only to be expected.
The bit where she's retiring to focus on getting better is also Tucson:
Decent human being does the best they can given circumstances. Person must give in somewhere in order to continue existing ina meaningful manner.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on February 24, 2012, 12:36:06 AM
I really hope that people kept copies of their letters that Nigel requested. We need more content, but there's a good start.
"The Book of Portland" is also on the horizon, what with the bridges and the Topof the Bottom.
Ooooh... there are many Portland stories. The Pipe and whatever that gruesomeness I was creeping myself out with a few months ago, and the bridges and the end of the world, and a whole bunch of amazing things TGRR wrote, and Old Weird Ben and whatnot. BTW, did I mention that my friend told me that he found something AMAZING that might explain what Old Weird Ben does with the cats? If I can find the thread, I'll tell the story.
Also, I see potential for a Book of Fresno.
I've occasionally contemplated doing something involving Nebraska (since "write what you know").
The catchiest riff I've come up with is that the reason hardly anybody who isn't from Nebraska or somewhere close to it can locate the state on a map is for the same reason your brain might refuse to acknowledge a rat corpse in your dresser when you're a kid. There's something wrong with us cornhuskers and the place we live. Something disturbing enough that your brain pretends we don't exist to protect you from the hazards of contemplating it. We're "fine" it because it's part of us. You can't see it because evolution selects against that sort of self-destructive behavior.
That or we really don't exist and the weird shaped spot on the map is just the irregular chunk that results from trying to map strange geometries onto an ordinary sphereoid. You don't remember it because it's not actually there.
Or because it's the main wide-scale test of the mind control satellites. The question is are they struggling to make you forget a place or gradually convincing you it actually exists?
:lulz:
Also, what's the only recent major pop-culture message mentioning Nebraska? That's right! A (http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/from-mind-control-to-superstardom-the-meaning-of-lady-gagas-marry-the-night/) La (http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/lady-gagas-judas-and-the-age-of-horus/)dy (http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/lady-gagas-born-this-way-the-illuminati-manifesto/) Ga (http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/the-occult-interpretation-of-lady-gagas-alejandro/)ga (http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/the-hidden-meaning-of-lady-gagas-telephone/) song (http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/lady-gagas-bad-romance-the-occult-meaning/).
Nebraska starts with "Neb". Like "nebulous".
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on February 24, 2012, 12:36:06 AM
I really hope that people kept copies of their letters that Nigel requested. We need more content, but there's a good start.
"The Book of Portland" is also on the horizon, what with the bridges and the Topof the Bottom.
I, also hope that people kept copies, because he has all those letters. It somehow never occurred to me that I wouldn't have access to them.
Which letters were these?
Mine was handwritten, but I took a picture.
Quote from: Anna Mae Bollocks on April 09, 2012, 07:12:42 AM
Which letters were these?
It was the letter-writing campaign in which PD trolled Mr. Language into falling in love with me.