This is Brain:

 This is Brain on Facebook:
 

Any Questions?

Albert G. Martin (1842[?] - Feb. 24, 1864)

Lately, I've been studying the Civil War. I'm no expert, far from it. That's why I read about it. I'm not going to claim I "like" the Civil War. I don't like it, but I do find it fascinating and baffling at the same time.

A while ago I came across a man by the name of Albert G. Martin. He was a Canadian (oddly enough) who in May of 1863, at the age of 18, enlisted with the 16th New York Cavalry, Company B as a private.

In October of 1863, Martin and several other Union soldiers were captured by the Confederates and sent to Belle Isle Prison in Richmond, Virginia.

If anyone is unfamiliar with Civil War prisons, they were bad. "Bad" being an understatement. Horrendous. Inhuman. Overcrowding, lack of food, lack of latrines (the water the soldiers drank was the same water they relieved themselves in), lack of protection from the elements all contributed to thousands of deaths in the camps. Andersonville in Georgia is an infamous Confederate example. But it went both ways. Point Lookout in Maryland was a particular heinous Union POW camp.

(If one is interested, the 1996 movie Andersonville is worth a watch if you're in the mood for viewing deplorable human behavior.)

Belle Isle Prison, from the accounts I've read, was just as bad as Andersonville. While nearly 13,000 died at Andersonville alone, roughly 1,000 died at Belle Isle (though sources vary).[1]

Yet here's how Albert Martin described his "stay" at Belle Isle (all spelling/grammar is Martin's own):

          "I cant complain of the useage for we get used vary well here all is a fellow cant run about as much is 

          if he was in his own Lines" (November 6, 1863).[2]

I tried to find more information about Martin but besides one website (the William L. Clements Library at The University of Michigan, where the majority of my information comes from) he seemed to be lost to history. The web was no help nor any of those things called books. I couldn't even find his date of death. All I could find was this:

"In November [1863], Martin finally wrote to his mother to inform her of his capture . . . but from this point onward, Martin disappears from the [historical] record."

Well, that's an interesting little mystery, isn't it?

But someone had to know, right? He was a Union Soldier after all. The Union Army, for the most part, kept meticulous records. Then again, he was a prisoner at Belle Isle and records were the least of their worries. Still, I felt that whatever happened to Martin had to be recorded somewhere.

So I searched the National Archives (okay, so I e-mailed the National Archives to have them search for me, but you get the idea). And they found something. So I sent them $3 and they sent me this:

Under "Remarks" it says: Captured at Lewinsville, VA Oct. 1. 1863. Admitted to Hospital at Richmond, VA. Feb.7. '64 where he died Feb. 24, 1864 of diarrhea ch.[?]

  

Albert Martin's Death Certificate.

Morbid, I know.

Granted, the mystery was easily solved, however I believe--but have no way of confirming--I'm the first person in roughly 150 years to read this document (not counting the person who copied it for me, but I'm going to pretend they didn't actually read it).

I just may be the first person since the Civil War to hear of his fate. His mother may have known:

        "In a letter written in 1884, probably in relation to a pension application, Martin's

         mother seems to imply that Albert died in the service. However, she is not listed

         in the state records as a pension recipient for that year."

Or maybe she just assumed he died in the service? Since the government has no record of her receiving money for his death?

A little depressing, isn't it? Sorry about that. Yet interesting, right? That's History for you.

A closer look at the Certificate clarifies a few things even the W. L. Clement Library didn't seem to know:

-- It seems he was 21, not 18, when he entered service.

-- He joined the army as a Private in May but by June was promoted to Corporal.[3]

-- His death, and cause of, are clearly listed and quite specific.

I don't know who Albert G. Martin was. I don't know what he liked to eat for breakfast, whether he liked coffee or chocolate or cats, or whether he was married or had children (though highly doubtful considering his age when he joined the Army and his unfortunate early death).

He may have been a terrible person. Or he may have been the kindest person in the world. I don't know. But I know when he died. I thought someone should. And now you do, too.

So here is Albert G. Martin's Death Certificate. With his name, his physical description, his occupation (farmer), his rank, his fate. Proof of his existence. Now on the internet for all to see. For all eternity.[4]

And who doesn't want their name to live forever?

Civil War Soldier boy

1. Far more men died of disease in their own camps than they did in actual battle and POW camps combined. According to Time Life (so take it with a grain of salt) roughly 390,000 Union and Confederate soldiers died of disease compared to around 60,000 of both armies who died as prisoners of war.

2. All quotes from the Albert G. Martin papers, William L. Clements Library, The University of Michigan. Used, um, without permission.

3. That's a pretty dang fast promotion, by the way, but it may be because the 16th New York had a less than stellar reputation when it came to deserters and needed all the men they could, though they did seem to have tangled with Mosby's Rangers, which may have accounted for the many desertions.

4. Or at least until the inevitable collapse of society.

A Daily Dose of Dio #7

Dio even has advice for children:

A Daily Dose of Dio #6

Busy at Boskone today, but still got time for Dio.

Last in Line

A Daily Dose of Dio #5

More rainbows. In the dark. Dark rainbows.

Apparently, Dio didn't want to include "Rainbow in the Dark" on the album Holy Diver. He thought it sounded too "poppy". He literally wanted the song destroyed so no one could hear it.

Got to be honest, he's not wrong. About the "pop" thing. It's the keyboards. Hard to not be "pop" when using keyboards.

Then again, it was the 80's. Keyboards were in the air.

Van Halen's "Jump" came out a year after Holy Diver. Of course, "Jump" had a lot to do with David Lee Roth leaving Van Halen, but this isn't about Roth, is it?

And 4 years later Iron Maiden used keyboards to great affect on their Seventh Son of a Seventh Son album and that album's not too pop. I guess.

Some people got together and remade the video to Rainbow in the Dark.

Some people have too much time on their hands.

A Daily Dose of Dio #4

Before Dio (the band), before Sabbath, before Rainbow, there was Elf. Most of what was Elf was integretated into Rainbow, because Ritchie Blackmore knew a good thing when he heard it.

I think the album cover of their first record speaks for itself:     

Yes. They were that awesome:

A Daily Dose of Dio #3

No one sings about rainbows better than Dio. Hell, he was in band named Rainbow (Granted, Rainbow was more Ritchie Blackmore's group, but that doesn't take away from anything, okay and Joe Lynn Turner wasn't anything to scoff at).

Even today, if Dio was still around, he could rock the rainbow.

Rainbows. See? The idea of Dio bringing the world together is making more and more sense, isn't it?


As good as this song is, all I can think about when I hear it now is Skittles "Taste the rainbow." Stupid Skittles:

A Daily Dose of Dio

Dio was also in a little band called Black Sabbath. He replaced Ozzy Osbourne. I mean, who could replace Ozzy? Dio, that's who. And you know what? He was, arguably (okay, that's a big old massive 'arguably'), better.

Be Excellent to Each Other

The Wyld Stallyns. You know their name*. You know their claim to fame: bringing humanity together to live as one. It was a lofty goal. A seemingly impossible goal. A goal only a fictional movie could give us. 

Or could it happen in the real world? Is there, somewhere, a Wyld Stallyns in our world?

I believe so.

But to help me believe, I called on the ancient art of Science. Science is good for things. Things like this.

To find the One, I spent years and years--if I had a guess: two. Two years--of my life researching music, all music from all genres from all over the world. And with the use of graphs and waveforms and the Gale-Shapley algorithm, I have found an answer. I have found the One. A One, I think, that may take some time to process, but if one really thinks about it, makes perfect sense.

I present to you today what Science has revealed to me. The Wyld Stallyns of the real world.

Peace, thy name is Dio.

Yes. Ronnie James Dio. Old metal horns himself.

Of course, Dio fans already know this. They've known for years. But now they've got Science to back them up.

If the music of Dio can reach the ears of every person in the entire world, as impossible as that may be, there may still be hope for us all. Yes, like the Call and Tim Cappello, I Still Believe we can save the world. With a lot of help from Dio.

Can we do this? Can we get the word out? I think we can. Repeat after me:

Dio. Dio. Dio.

Thus begins a Daily Dose of Dio. No need to thank me:

*And if you don't, please check out Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and the under appreciated Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. Or, you know, just Google it.

Three hours of shoveling snow ain't so bad

I live on the East Coast--please, don't hold that against me--and you might have heard we got some snow this weekend. It's funny, when I was living in Michigan we got snow all the time but USA Today never wrote articles about it. Nor did Al Roker come for a visit. Oh well, such is the fate of the flyover states.

Anyway, so we got a few feet of snow and everyone has been pretty much hunkered down in their homes the last day or so, thanks partially in part to the governor's driving ban--with up to a year in prison if you get caught or some such bullshit. It's mainly to stop joyriders, but still.

There are four humans stuck together--not literally--in my apartment right now. (There's usually three, but there's an extra this weekend so four instead of three and if three's a crowd what's four make?)

There's also one non-human in our apartment.* And, no, we do not have any pets.

Above our ventilation fan in our bathroom, a bird of some kind has made a nest for the winter. I think it's just the one, and not a family, by the sound of things. The lone bird was probably an outcast and while he or she hasn't bothered us too much up to this point, that changed during the blizzard. Now, we haven't bothered removing the bird since, unlike squirrels or rats or what have you, you don't have to worry about a bird chewing through wires or destroying any other part of your house. Well, it's unlikely a bird would do that. Still could, but unlikely. Oh, and it's not my house. Not that I don't care about or respect the property I rent, it's just that, well, it's not my house and we all need a place to call home during the winter, don't we?

When I woke up this morning and walked into the bathroom--as I am wont to do after a good night's sleep--I stepped in bird shit. We're not talking Radagast the Brown levels of bird shit, but shit is shit and even a drop on the floor is too much of it.

I cleaned it up all Spic and Span like and I had a few words with the bird. Me and the bird are copacetic now but I'm a bit worried. The fan is above the very spot where I brush my teeth and spend hours preparing my luminous hair.

Will tomorrow bring more shit?

Will tomorrow I be shit on?

I'd rather deal with the blizzard.

*we did have a bat once that circled the ceiling light in our living room several times before I noticed it. From what I've read, one of the main reasons a bat would ever fly into a house or any place it's unfamiliar with is because it's rabid. Rabid. Yikes. I managed to trap it in the stairwell and leave the door to our back porch open for it to find its way out. When I got back from work that day, the bat was gone. So it either flew out or found a home somewhere in the rafters of our Harry Tuttle-esque/Super Mario Bros.-inspired pipe-filled basement. So it's possible I have two non-humans living with me.

Thor Meets, ahem, Mephisto

I leave this here, unaltered and without comment, as a testament to the power of the Comic Book.

                                                                                                                                       The Mighty Thor #443, January 1992

(Most true believers out there will notice it's not the "real" Thor above, but the mere mortal Eric Masterson, who once temporarily replaced Thor after Thor was banished, yet again, by Odin after killing, yet again, Loki [they both got better]. After his tour of duty as Thor, Masterson went on to become Thunderstrike, whose claim to fame was a wicked awesome ponytail. Comics!)

Staring at Slides of David in Art 101 

This is creation,

he says,

a work of art out of rubble.

Imagine Michelangelo

chiseling masterworks of the human form

from what amounts to a lump of rock,

a rock teetering on the edge of a cliff,

waiting for the coyote to come along

and push it over the edge,

only for said coyote

to trip and fall and somehow end

up underneath the falling boulder

and they fall together,

fall long enough for the coyote

to pull out a sign saying

“yelp” or “help” or “wouldn’t you just know it?”

before he hits the ground

before the boulder hits him

and together they hit the earth hard,

but the coyote slinks out from underneath

as flat as a pancake

in time to see the dastardly 

road runner speeding by

only to stop long enough

to stick out his tongue--beep, beep--

in a mocking gesture--meep, meep--

only so the coyote can rise

accordion-like--phoenix-like--

from the rubble to do it all again,

but next time he’ll build his own wings

and glide on air, hovering 

over the road runner for miles and miles

only to fly into 

the side of a mountain.

This is what art takes,

he says,

pain and failure

and the ability to get up and do it all again

and for nothing, for no monetary gain whatsoever.

Ah, the coyote, the wild and wily coyote,

a truly respectful figure,

someone out of the days of chivalry,

an idealized form, a person,

a Don Coyote,

whom we all should aspire to.

Forget the fact  

he never gets what he wants,

he never gives up

and there is the art,

there is creation.

But that’s the trouble, isn’t it,

he says,

the never giving up?

It’s not easy to sustain such an attitude

after years and years of pain and failure.

But you must remember

the years and years of pain and failure

will eventually pay off,

maybe not in financial rewards,

but personal rewards,

personal triumphs.

Someone, somewhere, one day,

will see what you have done

and they will respond.

But remember,

the years and years of pain and failure

lead the way to art

and art leads

the way to life.

So I say, to myself,

Is that why you're here, oh Yoda

lecturing us about art 

instead of creating it? 

 

In defense of future posts

"Advice From the Experts"

I lay down in the empty street and parked
My feet against the gutter's curb while from
The building above a bunch of gawkers perched
Along its ledges urged me don't, don't jump.
                                              --Bill Knott

I don't write a lot of poetry. Mainly because I'm not very good at it. And yet, I can't stop writing it.

Poetry is unappreciated in today's world. Not under. Un. Unappreciated to the point of obsolescence. That much is obvious. I get it. I do. But it's a shame, really. Poets used to be highly regarded citizens. The word of a poet could change the world. But that's all disappeared. Writers, in general, have loss their influence. Books, too. No one seems to want to learn anything anymore, not since we've been able to open up a Search engine and find what we're looking for within a few seconds. That's not knowledge. That's laziness. Here's the things: thanks to the Internet, there's so much information out there, more than we've ever had access to before. It's too bad all we use it for is porn and pictures of cats. The cats! The cats!

I'm not any better than anyone else when it comes to laziness (for example, abusing the Internet for a laugh when I really should be writing). But, dang it, there's so much potential at our fingertips.

With our increasingly short attention spans and our need for a quick fix (thanks, again, to the Internet), poetry as an art form should shine on the Internet. Got ten minutes? Pull up a poem. It's that simple. It's that complicated. 

There are poetry phone apps out there. And that's good. But the only people who most likely know about them already read poetry to begin with.

Poetry, like comic books (whoa, where'd that come from?), needs better marketing. (Now that is a phrase I never thought I would say. But there it is.)

In the future, we will all wear sterile silver clothing. No, wait, that's not what I meant.

In the future, I plan to highlight some of my favorite modern(ish) poets who I feel are worth anyone's time and effort to read. And by modern I mean contemporary poets not modernist poets (although a few will more than likely creep in).

Like Bill Knott, for instance.

Poetry seems to be synonymous with "pretentious," with "boring." If people think about it at all. But it doesn't have to be boring. People seem to forget poetry can be funny. Granted, some might disagree with me there, having their own opinion of what "real" or "true" poetry is, but it's true. Poetry can by funny. And fun. Like a trip Cedar Point. Or the Moon. Fun!

And that's what I hope these future blog post will be. Fun.

Remember: a poem a day keeps Alzheimer's at bay.

Here's a story I wrote for another, uh, story. It was written as a bedtime story a father told his daughter. It didn't quite fit in the story. At all, really. I'm not sure how successful a story it is on its own, either. Of course all the stuff about Mali and the Sahara are actually from the father's POV, not mine. So, please, don't take this as my personal feelings on Mali and its people.

I was going to rewrite it a bit, clean it up a bit, but then I thought screw it. I did cut a few references to the daughter and made it a little less dad-telling-his-daughter-a-story-ish. No one is going to read it anyway. So here it is. For no one.

Good evening. You look all snug and comfy in your bed. Bet you feel nice and warm under the covers, don’t you? Well, tonight’s story doesn’t come from a book, so there are no pictures for me to show you, you’re going to have to see the words, see the pictures, on your own. Close your eyes. Just try to see the what I am saying. It’s not hard. Ready?

What I see is sand. Hills and valleys full of sand. And a deep blue sky. Can you see that? Now open your ears and listen to the history of a certain man and what he did to help others.

In the deserts of Mali, there is no water to drink.

Mali is a part of the Sahara, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. It is so dry nothing grows there. For miles and miles all anyone can see is sand. And for miles and miles there is not a drop of water to drink. Water, as I’m sure you know, is why we are all here on this planet. We are all water people. It’s good for everything. We can drink it. We can cook with it. We can swim in it. It keeps us alive. Well, unfortunately, not everyone has enough to drink. That’s a bad thing.

A long time ago a man set out from Mali to look for water for his people. When he left, his name was Nabo the Foolhardy. No one believed in him. They all thought they had seen the last of Nabo. He wandered the desert for a long time, finding nothing, nothing at all. 

Until one day he found a frog. 

Frogs, you see, are full of good things, even though people may tell you different. You can’t get warts and they can’t get stuck in your throat. They're harmless and they’re special. He watched this frog for hours, until, as the sun began to sleep, the little frog hopped away. But the frog had left something behind. No, no, it’s not what you think. You know what that frog left behind? 

Water. 

Water in the sand that had seeped from its skin. So, Nabo the Foolhardy grabbed all the frogs he could find. Now, this wasn’t easy mind you. There just are not that many frogs in the desert. In fact, it was a task that took him several years, but he managed to collect enough frogs for a little experiment. And you know what he did with all those frogs? 

He took them for a walk. 

He walked long and far, through sand and dry river beds where the mud was too thick to drink for humans but the frogs soaked up all the moisture,all the water that was still in the mud and then when he saw that the dry river bed was even dryer than when he started he picked up one frog, brought it to his lips, and squeezed. Not too hard, though, he didn’t want to kill the kind frog, but he squeezed just hard enough that water came spilling through the frog’s skin. And Nabo drank and drank until his thirst was quenched. 

Then, he smiled. 

He gathered up all his frogs and went back home. When the villagers saw him coming over a hill, they rejoiced and then they laughed. They rejoiced that he was alive but they laughed, for they saw what was following him. As Nabo came down the hill, he was followed by hundreds and hundreds of frogs. A few of the people didn’t laugh. A few screamed “It’s the plague, the plague” and ran away forever. But Nabo calmed the rest and answered all their questions and showed them the miracle of the frogs. 

No longer was Nabo known as the Foolhardy. He was Nabo the Great and he lived a long, happy life as a hero to his people. 

Today, if you go to the center of Mali, you’ll find Nabo’s Frog Farm, a fenced-in, tarp-covered pen holding thousands of hopping frogs, one for each member of the village. One frog supplies enough water for one person for an entire year! That’s how the people of Mali have survived for a thousand years.

Mandrake, the Phantom, and Elizabeth Falk

A few months ago I had the privilege of talking with Elizabeth Falk, the widow of Lee Falk, creator of the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, at the Boston Comic Con. There were a lot of great people to see there (I'm still bummed I didn't get a chance to talk to Peter Bagge--Hate was my Indy comics gateway drug--but them's the breaks) but the only one I really talked to was Mrs. Falk.

I was aware she was his widow but my friend was not. He asked if she was his daughter, which made me want to hide my face but it's a fair enough question. She was about twenty years younger than he was when they married. She still looks great, by the way.

In its day, Mandrake the Magician was as well known as Spider-Man or Garfield. It depends on how you look at things but Mandrake could be considered the first "superhero" in comics. His superpower was making people believe anything he wanted them to, simply by making a gesture. The strip began in 1934, four years before Superman. Not only that but the Phantom, who is without superpowers and relies on his strength and wits, was created in 1934, five years before Batman. It's hard to say who came first and maybe it really doesn't matter (hey there hipsters) but it's interesting none-the-less. Falk continued writing the Phantom from 1934 until his death in 1999. That's dedication. That's love for what you do right there.

I admit I'm not all that well read in Mandrake or the Phantom but I've recently been trying to correct that. While the Phantom, if not widely read, is still remembered, it's too bad Mandrake's been largely forgotten because it's really good stuff.

There are better examples, sure, but "pussy-visaged" is hard to beat.

A friend and I were lucky enough to see some of the original art pages for Mandrake and the Phantom comic strips, pieces from Mrs. Falk's own collection. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the art, but like all art it's better seen in person.

While Mandrake was modeled after Leon Mandrake (among others, too), a real life magician, the look of Mandrake was modeled on Falk himself, who sketched the early strips before asking Phil Davis to draw the strip, which he did until his death in 1964. She even told us that Mandrake's smoking jacket was modeled after the same jacket Falk would walk around the house in. Okay, so maybe that's only interesting to me, but still.

Falk wrote the scripts while the art was by Davis, whose art really stood out. You could see individual ink strokes and the texture of a striped overcoat that gets lost when printed on newsprint. The word balloons were still there, some cut out and pasted on, others written directly in the panels. 

I couldn't find scans of the art I saw but I mean just look at panels 5 and 6. Uh, please.

 

One panel had a great looking dinosaur, which had to have taken hours and hours to fully render despite the fact that the majority of the detail would be lost due to the limitations of the printing process back then.

Then on the next page Mandrake boarded a rocket ship blasting off to who knows where.

Dinosaurs and rocket ships? Why haven't I read Mandrake before this?

Who can forget Brass Monkey, that funky Monkey?

I think the most interesting part of the conversation was when Mrs. Falk started talking about Fellini. Yes, thee Fellini. Federico himself. Apparently, the Falks were good friends with Fellini and would stay at his villa whenever they were in Italy. There was even a talk of a Fellini Mandrake the Magician movie. Now there's a lost opportunity if I ever heard one. Mrs. Falk even did a quick impression of how Fellini sounded like on their answering machine (apparently his voice was really high and excited). It was a bit surreal.

Despite his famous comic creations, Falk preferred theater. On the stage, he directed Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando, among others.

That's not to mention all the trips he took all over the world.

I get the feeling a biography on Lee Falk would be one fascinating read. Someone needs to get working on one right now.

They were selling the art, too. And we got a really good price on a set of 3 pages: $7,000. My friend seriously contemplated buying them. I kind of wished he did.

By the way, Mrs. Falk herself is an accomplished stage director and writer and helped write some of the later Phantom strips. She was the first woman ever to direct a stage play at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London. How cool is that?

Yeah, she's pretty awesome.

Man, sometimes I hate Comic Cons, but sometimes I love 'em, too. 

Mandrake, the Phantom, and Flash Gordon in the 80's!

Side note: One of my professors in college is the Phantom expert Robert Griffin who was a consultant on the Billy Zane Phantom movie. Um, well, at least he got to meet Kristy Swanson and Catherine Zeta-Jones, so that's something.

*All material related to Mandrake the Magician, the Phantom, and the Defenders of the Earth copyright King Features Syndicate.

There's this thing called Good Reads . . .

If you haven’t heard, there’s this website out there called Good Reads where you basically build a virtual bookshelf of all the books you’ve read, are reading, and plan to read.

And it’s addictive. I joined three days ago and I have already listed over 400 books in my “My Books” shelf, all star-rated and a few with reviews.

According to my “stats”, apparently my top two most-read (i.e. Favorite) writers are Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns, which (no offense to either of them) is far from the truth. They’re both comic book writers and I read a lot of comics, especially Batman and Green Lantern. And it just so happens that both Morrison and Johns have been writing those characters since 2004/2006. Morrison on Batman, Johns on Green Lantern. And since I’ve read every Morrison Batman and Johns Green Lantern book they’ve written in the past 6-7 years, well that comes out to a lot of comic books.

Side note: In case you were wondering (and I know you weren’t) I own every Green Lantern comic book published since 1976 (starting with issue 90, which was published 4 years after issue 89)*. No fooling. That’s 36 years worth of the Emerald Crusader’s adventures. Money well spent, you ask me. Money well spent.

This is what I say to women after I tell them I read comics. Especially after I tell them I prefer Kyle Rayner as GL.

 

*Full Disclosure: I am missing a few Action Comics Weekly issues that were published after the cancellation of Green Lantern Vol. 2 and the start of GL Vol. 3 (circa 1988, a dark period in the life of all the Green Lanterns). Mainly because they’re not very good and I refuse to pay more than 50 cents an issue.  Right off the bat, Hal Jordan pimp slaps Carol Ferris (his on again/off again girlfriend) several times. To be fair, she was Star Sapphire at the time [was she, or was she just dressed like SS? I forget]. Yeah, she was evil for a while. She got better.

Image from Green Lantern Reborn, art by Ethan "I draw one crazy Sinestro" Van Sciver

Hey look, it's Poetry! Everybody loves Poetry.

The Illusion of Movement

I.

I stare out of the subway window, out at the darkness, as the occasional light flashes by when out of nowhere the tunnel, the earth itself, opens up and I see another train below us--us, as if I'm a part of all of this, as if these people in here are a part of me--and then it's gone, cut off, the wall is back but something is different now, pictures flicker by, a series of photographs, and as we--us again--pick up speed the wall becomes a motion picture, a commercial on the Green Line--even away from the TV we (goddamn it) can't escape them--pretty people at the beach, burning on a suntan, wading in the water with bikinis and boxers, but the images don't do what they're supposed to do all they do is make me think of the suicide dolphins, the self-destructive beached dolphins that appear every other year--the hundreds! the hundreds!--to throw themselves on the sand and soak up the sun as they gasp for breath and when the people--when the heroes--come they can only save a few and we--they--cry.

II.

Never show the dead dolphins in the pictures of the beach, in the commercials at the beach. 

Never show the dead fish washing ashore, never capture the smell the fish bring, the rainy day fish smell, the rotting body fish smell. 

Never show the seagulls shit on someone's head or into a child's ice cream cone. 

Never show the hot sand burning feet. 

Never show the Portuguese Man o’ War, the not-really-a-jellyfish jellyfish, floating dead a few hundred feet away, still dangerous, still toxic.

Never show the fat people.

III.

Someone blows out the candle and then the pictures are gone, the pretty people are gone, and I can’t even remember what product they were selling but it was probably beer or shoes or suntan lotion, which would be the most logical but commercials are never the most logical.

I’m back in darkness, back in the tunnel as the occasional light flashes by and I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be the same light, a single light, and I’m on a movie set, and outside is a man out there with a light on a dolly, a light on a swivel he keeps spinning around to give the illusion of movement as two or three other people shake the subway car for extra effect.

The conductor hits the brakes hard and I fall into the woman next to me who looks at me with dagger eyes as if it was my fault and I fumble out a sorry, tell her I didn’t mean it in the slightest and she calls me a little shit and pinches the back of my arm, digging nails into flesh, drawing blood, making me scream a high pitch whiny bitch scream, but I don’t say anything to her.

The doors open and I know it's not my stop but I get off anyway and turn back as the doors close. She breaks into a smile and waves goodbye with her finger as I stand there staring, rubbing my arm, waiting for the next train.

"What are fears but voices airy?

Whispering harm where harm is not;

And deluding the unwary

Till the fatal bolt is shot!"

        --William Wordsworth, from the awesomely titled "Inscriptions - Supposed to be Found In and Near a Hermit's Cell, 1818 - I" (Yes, there is a sequel!)

So I'm a bit behind the times. It's 2012 and I just found out there are these things called Blogs. I think they're pronounced Bee logs. I imagine they're similar to the Balrog from Lord of the Rings, but I could be wrong.

Since this blog resides on the internet I figured I'd go all pretentious and name my blog after a two hundred year old poem by a dead white guy. A poet whose last name just happened to be Wordsworth. Yeah, and my real last name is Pussymerit.

But along with being pretentious, I think the name fits. I guess. Because this blog is going to be all about deceit apparently. Hm. Maybe I should rethink this.

Actually, the title refers to me. I am the unwary. Unwary of this whole internet thing. I've been hesitant to start a blog. Hell, I've been hesitant to start many things. I've stayed away from all social media for some unknown reason. Not so unknown really. It's fear. Fear of what I don't know. Hence, the Wordsworth quote. Plus, for awhile I felt there were too damn many blogs out there already and I didn't want to become another rusty clog in a machine of shit. But then I thought, you know, I would never say there are too many books out there, or too many movies, or songs, or religions--well, maybe that last one.

Anyway, I talked myself into this whole blog thing. Well, I had a little help from a friend, too. So she shares the blame if this turns out bad. But, really, how could this turn out bad?

So what's this blog about? Good question. Hopefully I'll have an answer one of these days.