Monthly Archives: July 2020

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Ivanka Trump’s endorsement of The King in Yellow play violates ethic rules

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Ivanka Trump, used her position as senior advisor to the president to endorse an unproduced play called The King in Yellow on Twitter, a play whose contents are said to have made Marquis de Sade advocates blush. She captioned the photo, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

What is The King in Yellow?

Originating in France in the mid 1800s, The King in Yellow was condemned not just for its content but for the effect it had on its audience. It was seized by the French government, but translated versions found their way to London and ultimately across the pond.

The last copy of the play was thought to have been burned by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in the 1910s. Anthony Comstock, head of the Society deemed, the play “a threat to the very fabric that holds society together. It isn’t merely titillating or seditious. It is funnel by which madness passes into the mind. It is a grimoire dictated straight from Lucifer’s lips. Every poor soul who dared to gaze upon it is either invalid or dead.”

How Ivanka Trump acquire this cursed work?

Last Monday a stranger knocked on the North Portico of the White House. There was no breach in the fence along the Pennsylvania Avenue. No sensors tripped on the North Lawn. No signs of a high altitude aircraft or a parachute. The stranger was simply there, waiting patiently, in tattered yellow robes with ribbons swaying against the breeze.

“You, sir, should unmask.” A Secret Service agent shouted.

White House staffers say the stranger appeared to be wearing a blank porcelain mask and that he was unfazed when the Secret Service shined their laser sights into his eyes.

“Lay your disguise aside.” The agent repeated.

“I wear no mask.” The stranger said.

White House staffers claim the frayed hem of the Stranger’s robes unfurled and outstretched like tentacles. It wrapped itself around the Service members pistols and plucked the weapons from their grasp. The stranger stepped over the threshold and requested an audience with President Trump. He said he was an emissary for “Hastur the unspeakable, the King in Yellow, conqueror of Carcosa where twin suns sink into Lake Hali, where many moons circle the sky, and black stars rise.”

White House staffers say throughout the entire encounter the stranger held a copy of the play, a gift for the President from those dwelling in a neighboring plane of existence.

Ivanka is behaving strangely  

Of course President Trump didn’t read the play, but his daughter did and she’s been tweeting about it ever since.

“I just finished The King in Yellow and the shadows of my thoughts are stretching across the Rose Garden, crawling up the hedges and stepping onto lawn #mindfulness”

“I have seen the place where the Hyades cluster points, the skeleton of the civilization, and the one who calls the ashes his home. #meditation”

“They call this the Blue Room, but I’m seeing the Yellow Sign everywhere I look. On the carpet. The curtains. Even the chairs. #wellness”

Ivanka’s social media activity illustrates how The King in Yellow is already affecting her mental state.

Can anything be done for Ivanka?

Seeking some kind of treatment White House staffers scoured the Library of Congress for information on The King in Yellow.

In 1895, author Robert W. Chambers collected stories from those with the misfortune of having read the play. One such victim was Hildred Castaigne who said, “I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.”

While White House staffers combed through accounts from survivors Ivanka shared craft projects on Instagram. Tissue collages, macaroni art, and glitter. All made to look like the Yellow Sign, an angular glyph like a triskelion or something out of The Lesser Key of Solomon.

Ivanka’s tweets culminated with a link to a pdf of the play itself. That’s when the hashtags

#CourtOfTheDragon, #CarcosanKraken, and #YellowSign, started trending.

Now there’s a mass contagion of madness, despite social media platforms attempts to suppress the document. The CDC has joined in the effort to trace the origins of the play to try to understand what they’re dealing with without exposing themselves to it.

What is The King in Yellow about?

Little is known about the play itself since so few readers live long enough to recount it. The details psychiatric experts compiled say its similar to Edgar Allen Poe’s Masque of the Red Death.

In it, Prince Prospero lords over a kingdom in the grip of a pandemic called the “red death.” So named because it makes its victims bleed from their pores until there’s nothing left. While the people cry out for leadership, Prospero bunkers in his stronghold with 1,000 nobles, leaving everyone beyond his walls to fend for themselves.

The extended quarantine gives Prospero a case of cabin fever. Loathing this disruption to his lifestyle, he wants his kingdom to get back to business as usual. He decides to rally the nobles by throwing a masquerade ball. The nobles are all too happy to feed Prospero’s ego, by embracing the opulence for which they’ve grown accustomed.

The ball is success until a figure in a red funeral shroud parts the dancefloor. The figure wears a mask of blood slathered flesh, a visage made to resemble the plague riddled corpses lining the castle walls. Prospero is so incensed by this reminder of his failures that he calls the guards to hang the party crasher.

When the party crasher is unmasked its revealed there’s nothing underneath. He is the red death incarnate and in that moment all the revelers drop dead.

What is Carcosa?

Another aspect of the play psychiatric experts are trying to understand is its location. Carcosa is a scorched hellscape first documented by Ambrose Bierce in his story An Inhabitant of Carcosa. Bierce would later admit he got the location from a nightmare he had as a child.

Bierce dreamt he stood before a alien citadel with monolithic battlements, skyscraping spires, and a crocked keep, a structure so tall and wide it stretched beyond his field of vision.

When he entered young Bierce found the remains of a cafeteria. The kitchen stunk of rotten meat, moldy cheese, and ammonia. The steam trays were teaming with maggots. The stovetops were teaming with pans, each filled with the grey hollowed out husks of human organs. Deflated entrails spiraled into donut swirls. Strips of skin were laid like bacon. Boney fingers were arranged like sausages. Kidneys were covered in shredded cheese and garnished with minced parsley.

The faded sign above the buffet read OMELETTE BAR.

There was a long dining table, the length of a redwood. Swarms of flies hovered over the spread. Beyond that was the exit. It lead to a hilly plain where the grass had been baked golden brown. The remains of ashen pyres dotted the landscape. There were craterous remains of dried ponds, flags marked with the Yellow sign, and sand traps.

Bierce recalled thinking he was standing in the remains of a golf course and then he woke up.

Psychiatric experts are debating whether Bierce’s dream was a vision of something that happened on some distant world or if it was a premonition of something destined to happen here.

Did Ivanka Break the law?

The King in Yellow is spreading across social media thanks to Ivanka Trump who may have violated an ethics rule by sharing it. The United States Office of Government Ethics is responsible for preventing conflicts of interest with the executive branch. West Wing employees, like Ivanka, are forbidden from endorsing an organization (be it a corporation, a non-profit, or an alien order.

A spokesperson for Ivanka defended her passion for the play. “Ivanka was showing personal support for a work once condemned now revered as a timeless treasure.”

“Timeless treasure” is one way to describe a play that causes readers to gouge their eyes out with ice cream scoopers. “Literary contagion” is how the CDC is describing it and right now they are failing to manage the spread.

Readers are acting out scenes in the middle of flaming buildings, four lane highways, and shark infested waters. Experts fear the carnage is going to get worse.

On Wednesday, the President stacked printed copies of the play (he has yet to read it) on the Resolute Desk, giving the accursed work his personal thumbs up. Because of course he did.

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Trump commutes the Penguin’s sentence from Blackgate Penitentiary

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While many nonviolent offenders have been released due to COVID-19, President Trump has pardoned a rogues gallery of supervillainy. He’s put maleficent metahumans, supernatural sadists, and lavish lunatics back on the streets.

It started when Trump granted clemency to the serial killer Cletus Kasady from a life sentence at the Ravencroft Institute. Kasady is a host to an alien symbiote known as Carnage. Trump reasoned the symbiote held the key to curing the corona virus. Carnage escaped. Trump released Killer Croc from Belle Reve Penitentiary, reasoning Croc’s regressive atavism held the key to curing the corona virus. Croc escaped. Trump freed the Joker from Arkham Asylum, reasoning the Joker’s blood contaminated with the Titan disease held the key to curing the corona virus and… you see the pattern.

Trump’s attention then shifted to supervillains with accelerated healing.

He brokered the extradition of Sabretooth from the island nation of Genosha. He released Dr. Victor Von Doom, Dr. Michael Morbius, and Dr. Nathaniel Essex from the Raft Prison Maximum Security Prison. He released the Juggernaut from the Vault beneath the Rockies, Solomon Grundy from a bubble orbiting the Earth, Taskmaster from the Negative Zone, and General Zod from the Phantom Zone.

The White House maintains every pardon was to help fight COVID-19, but the House Intelligence Committee believes they were part of an elaborate effort to bury one particular pardon.

The Penguin is back on the streets of Gotham

This Friday, President Trump commuted the sentence of former adviser Oswalt Cobblepot, the aspiring aristocrat turned monocle modeling mobster known as the Penguin.

Cobblepot was convicted on seven charges including:

  • intimidating federal witnesses with a cassowary (a giant bird capable of severing limbs with a single stroke of its talon).
  • fitting hummingbirds with surveillance equipment to spy on political opponents.
  • wrapping a political rival in tree bark and setting woodpeckers on him.
  • converting the Cornell Lab of Ornithology into a weapons facility.
  • accepting Fabergé eggs from the Russian government.
  • exchanging carrier pigeons with WikiLeaks.
  • And riding an ostrich down Pennsylvania Avenue.

When Robert Mueller investigated electoral interference from Planet Apokolips, he indicted several members of Trump’s cabinet. Cobblepot was the most defiant, publicly denouncing the charges, “I don’t give a hoot what allegations this court of owls regurgitates. They’re vultures picking at the First Amendment. Mueller is quack bureaucrat parroting the dodos on capitol hill.”

One such dodo was top House Democratic Apokolips investigator Rep. Adam Schiff. Schiff grilled Cobblepot throughout his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.

“Yes or no, did the Trump campaign correspond with the extraterrestrial tyrant known as Darkseid?”

“There is no evidence there was collusion.”

“What about the Omega Beam burns throughout the remains of the Clinton estate?”

“Coincidence.”

“What about Mother Box plugged into Trump’s teleprompter?”

“Coincidence.”

“What about the president’s personal parademon security detail?”

“Coincidence.”

While Schiff wasn’t able to crack the Penguin on the stand, Mueller’s charges stuck. It wasn’t long until Cobblepot was confined to his own private aviary in Blackgate Penitentiary.

The Penguin sprung the coop

This Friday Cobblepot waddled out of prison in his signature top hat, purple paisley vest, and coat tails. He modeled his ensemble for the press. “I thought you’d all like to see a Neil Richards original up close.”

The reporters were quick to flock around him.

“Vicki Vale, Gotham Gazette, does this mean the president has forgiven all of your past crimes?”

Cobblepot screwed a cigarette holder into his lips. “What crimes?”

“You programed an army of penguins to bomb the city.”

“That didn’t stick. I was illegally detained by a vigilante.”

“Lois Lane, Daily Planet, are you concerned your release might reignite interest in the Apokolips investigation?”

Cobblepot opened his umbrella. “The bird-brained Apokolips Hoax is coming to an end and the buzzards behind it are fleeing the nest. Parademons can smell fear and I have no doubt they’re coming for the members House Intelligence Committee.”

He flicked a switch on his umbrella and a foothold jut out from the bottom. The umbrella spun until the canopy broke off and the frame became a set of helicopter blades. The Penguin bid the press adieu and flew to his penthouse above the Iceberg Longue in Washington D.C.

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Students from the future get more conspicuous as 2020 gets worse

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They were spotted last January, mixed into the crowd at the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration. Spectators noted a group of young people in fashions that were out of sync with the moment. Not a shawl or trendy trench coat among them. They were dressed head to toe in polyester, like Antarctic explorers. They wore mountain ranger coats, heavy duty backpacks, climbing pants, and clunky boots, but what made them really stick out were their helmets. They were dressed for scaling the alps not for watching Carson Daily count the ball down.

As the seasons changed, the mountaineers kept appearing at sights of major news events. Always keeping to themselves. Never intermingling with crowds. In New York they circled the Central Park field hospital before it was taken down. In Minneapolis they took souvenirs from the third precinct before it was set afire. In Seattle they surveyed the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone before it was raided by the police.

While the mountaineers wear helmets, they seem averse to facemasks, social distancing, or shelter in place directives. According to the CDC the mountaineers have been spotted in every major city and yet none of them have been admitted to an ICU or even tested for the virus. “They behave like they already have an immunity.”

The mountaineers act like they’re on vacation

During Italy’s lockdown, the mountaineers were seen riding gondolas through the Venetian canals. CCTV footage shows them skipping through Disney World and vanishing before security patrols could converge on them. In Sweden, they were spotted gossiping outside of crowded bars and cafés, openly mocking patrons.

The mountaineers also appear to be following President Trump like groupies on a concert tour. They gathered outside of St. John’s Church hours before the president’s photo-op was announced. They materialized outside the White House moments before the president was being escorted into his bunker. And they had front row seats for his Tulsa Oklahoma rally, in which they appeared to be applauding ironically, like patrons at a midnight movie. They spoke along with the president like they were reciting lines from Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Five mountaineers were spotted atop Mount Rushmore during the president’s independence day address. Park Service Staffers tried flanking them from the underbrush, but the mountaineers were onto them.

One ranger said, “I had them in my sights, but when I set down my binoculars they were gone.”

What the mountaineers fashion sense tells us about them

This has been one of the hottest summers on record and yet the mountaineers shed no layers, show no signs of perspiring, and spend most of their time in the sun. It’s as if their snowsuits have onboard air conditioning systems, a technology SONY is just now pioneering.

It was members of the fashion community who speculated the mountaineers could be visitors from the future. They believed the mountaineer look had less to do with backwoods culture and more to do with shifting exercise trends.

Gen Xers wore sweat bands and tennis outfits long after gym class. They wore sleeveless shirts with or without biceps. They wore skin-tight running shorts with flannels. It was an active look.

These days millennials wear crop tops and leggings outside the Yoga Studio. Even at the grocery store they’re making statement about their commitment to fitness. Gen Z is getting into hiking and appreciating the environment. It’s only natural their exercise apparel would reflect that.

Fashion authorities say gorpcore, or ‘mountaineering modern’, is in its infancy, but once hiking becomes the dominant form of exercise gorpcore will hit its stride.

There could be more to the mountaineering look

Theoretical physicists speculate that the mountaineers wear helmets for a reason. They believe the half dome shape serves as the neural interface for a time travel device. “Einstein’s theory of relativity states just such an accessory could warp space time without crushing the human mind.”

Another sign the mountaineers are from the future is how they make no effort to conceal their wearable technology. They search the web in their open palms. They answer calls by flicking their earlobes. And their eyes shine whenever they’re recording. The tech uses a gesture based interface. Mountaineers make cameras with their fingers and pinch and expand to zoom.

Mountaineers clash with demonstrators

Throughout the demonstrations against police violence, statues of confederate generals have been toppled. Columbus sculptures have found their way into harbors, and monuments to slave owning presidents have been burned.

As more effigies have been shattered more mountaineers have appeared, swiping at the air as if to frame the scene.

Demonstrators suspected something was off when they overheard what the mountaineers said to each other.

“They kept using expressions no one could understand. They called restaurants ‘carnivore stores’ They called retailers ‘object exhibiters.’ They called cars ‘dinosaur drinkers.’ They waved the air away from their faces and said, ‘era aroma is real.’ When someone tossed a Molotov cocktail into a Speedway a group of mountaineers cheered, ‘Roaring twenties!’ like we’d know what they meant. I heard one of them mutter, ‘I expected more gunfire.’”

Demonstrators reported feeling mocked by the mountaineers. “One of my older friends asked, ‘Aren’t you warm under all that?’ and they fired back, ‘OK Millie.’ I started to say, ‘Her name’s not Millie’ when one of them said, ‘Ok Zed’ to me.”

Linguists theorize that “Millie” and “Zed” are meant to be pejoratives for millennials and Gen Zers.

Mountaineers don’t care about messing with the spacetime continuum

Theoretical physicists are baffled by the mountaineers’ behavior.

“Whoever gave them this technology didn’t coach them on how to use it responsibly. One of them pointed out how our flags had too few stars, saying something about Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. Another pointed to the empty pedestal in front of the capital and whispered, ‘That’s where they put the Prince statue.’ One rattled off the names of the next three presidents like it was nothing. Oh and they were all too happy to spoil the ending for Stranger Things.”

History professors have considered the possibility that the mountaineers are students from the future here to witness our interesting times firsthand. “There’s so much to learn from. A pandemic. A recession. An authoritarian administration. A laundry list of social revolutions. I just wish they weren’t so rude while they were making their observations. From the quotes we’ve gathered and the slang we’ve deciphered it seems like the mountaineers view us the way we view townsfolk during the Salem witch trails: undereducated, superstitious, and hysteric. You know, when I say it out loud. It kind of makes sense.”

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St. Louis couple confront protesters with poo sticks

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Protesters were marching down a private street leading to the St. Louis Mayor’s residence when they were confronted by a couple brandishing poo sticks. Cellphone video shows a man with a long double-pronged BM baton and a woman with a bowel-blasted blackjack, standing back to back like heroes in one of the many actions films glamorizing poo stick culture.

The conflict escalated as the woman set bushels of horse apples on the lawn and the man strapped a bandolier of poo cartridges over his shoulder.

Karl Kamienski, a reporter who came close to getting a face full of semi-digested corn, said, “I doubt anyone would’ve noticed the stone mansion had the couple not come out with a cow chip nightstick and a caca cudgel.”

A second video shows how close the situation came to getting out of hand. The woman stood on the edge of the property waving her manure mace dangerously close to a demonstrator’s face. The video shows the defecation munition starting to melt. Had the poo stick remained any longer the demonstrator would’ve gotten a fecal matter facial.

Both videos show the homeowners and the protesters exchanging heated words, but neither recording captured any audio. Based on the way the couple brandished their weapons, we can only speculate if they were echoing one of the many poo-centric catchphrases they’ve seen on TV.

Phrases like:
“I’m here chew to bubblegum and get poo all over everyone and I’m all out of bubblegum.”
“Remember when I said I’d smear poop on you last? I lied.”
“Which of you wants to star in a John Waters movie?”

The incident only lasted for 10 minutes, but many are questioning the couple’s use of poo sticks.

Poo stick advocates speak out

The couple, now identified as Mark and Patricia McCloskey, have released a statement in the wake of the incident. “This is all private property. There are no public sidewalks or public streets. The protesters shattered an antique gate. We were told we’d be tortured, cooked, alive and eaten. We were alone against an angry mob. So we exercised our second amendment right.”

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating whether or not the couple’s use of poo sticks qualifies as self-defense.

Dwight Rawley, a spokesperson for the National Poo-Stick Association, is certain they acted lawfully. “State law does not prohibit open carrying of shit switches, turd timber, or stool stumps. While it is illegal to wield skewered fertilizer in a threatening manner, the McCloskeys were on their own property. They were well within their rights to spray dollops of diarrhea on anyone who walked past.”

Critics of poo stick culture speak out

Poo sticks are a stone age technology, designed to ward off marauders who didn’t want to get manure on their muzzle. They fell out of fashion as fart sprays became a safer alternative. But like a plugged up bile duct, poo sticks eventually came roaring back. Thanks in no small part to the infamous episode of the police procedural The Upright Citizens Brigade.

Pretty soon after the episode aired, every jacked up action hero was double fisting excrement extensions. Who can forget Sylvester Stallone wielding branches covered in cow pies or Arnold Schwarzenegger wielding a tree trunk coated in elephant dung?

Like it or not poo stick culture is an American fixture. Movies and video games continue to glorify poo stick violence, in hyper kinetic sequences set to industrial rock music. We cheer as John Wick paints someone’s face in bodily waste. Gamers can’t put down the controllers as they smear demons in digital discharges. And yet, these mediums rarely stop to explore the humiliating aftermath of a poo stick attack.

Closing thoughts

The McCloskeys have come out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and they say their concern was limited to a handful of “aggressive agitators.”

There’s no way of knowing if the protestors would’ve actually gotten any closer to the McCloskey manor. Yet one thing is for sure, the couple escalated the situation by wielding such extreme excretions.

•••

Dead Branch image by Jean52
3D Poop by 2weet
Photoshop by Drew Chial

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