Bitter Karella's Hot Fresh Slurry 40
Well, what a week that was! The wife and I went to the big Star Trek con in Las Vegas this past weekend, run by the money-gougiest of money gougers Creation Entertainment. Do you love to spend $10 on a bottle of water, paying prices so outrageous that the cashier literally apologizes without being prompted? “I’m sorry, it’s $10,” he said. “It’s fine, I understand,” I replied. Of course, one understands that Creation has to gouge to make up for all the money that it did not spend on convention art, since instead they covered their merchandise in obvious midjourney AI portraits of vulcans where their eyebrows slide off their faces and their fingers look like hotdogs.
The journey to Las Vegas is always a spiritually debasing pilgrimage into hell and this one more so cuz i finally got covid after 3 years of abstinence (lol) and God showed me terrible truths in the depths of my delirium. The covid has been mercifully mild, but we spent the last day of con languishing secluded in our hotel room, unable to get food because the hotel replaced the room service menu with instructions to "Text us! We won't tell you the number. Use the app! We won't tell you what it is!" The hotel vented rooms into other rooms, so we were dying in a miasma of other guests' bathroom odors and weed fog.
The whole hotel had that sop water smell where you can tell they're desperately trying to cover up the reek of vomit, and was woefully understaffed — there were huge lines to check in since despite there being a convention they only had 2 poor harried clerks working the front desk. Like every other business in America, they had decided to replace actual human labor with cheaper automated kiosks that constantly break down, as they had just in time for the convention. And of course, in such situations, the casino just expects its already overworked skeleton crew to work even harder and just absorb any abuse they get. Awful system. Awful country!
Luckily, we recovered enough after a day of seclusion to make the 10 hour drive back to home, but scuttling through the desert in a covid haze was real fear & loathing hours. I was in and out of dreams, waking up to see a parched hellscape of the deadest stretches of Nevada and California, punctuated by a constrant stream of “CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL” and “GAVIN NEWSOM WHY DO YOU LET THE RIVERS GO INTO THE OCEAN” signs and then you see that giant fun novelty thermometer in Baker that's not so much of a fun novelty when it's reporting obscene 110 temperatures and you're just shooting through the wasteland in a little air conditioned pod. You stop at lonely desert towns that are just a single convenience store to buy a $5 protein bar. Screens blare at you to download the lonely desert town convenience store app. At the gas pump, more screens blare at you to buy crypto. Everything is a screen, but none of the screens work. Anyway, God said the world is an irredeemable fuck and Las Vegas is an open air toilet that they spray fabreze over but we all already knew this.
However, I did look very good in my Counselor Troi cosplay
Marina Sirtis said my look was a compliment to her, which was probably her just being polite, but still very nice to hear. Please excuse the surliness of this week’s newsletter, I still got the rona brain fog XP
***
Last week, I think I linked to the latest Midnight Pals podcast trailer with Dean Koontz, but, in case you missed it, the video version is now available!
Speaking of, here’s some Midnight Pals!
***
Benji Smith: ah! the sum total of human creativity!
Smith: i'll steal it!
Smith: [screaming] NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW!
Smith: i have a simple ai recipe
Smith: you just take a pinch of entergagement
Smith: a dash of synergy
Smith: the stolen creativity & hard work of infinite real humans
Smith: and voila!
Smith: all the gray content slurry you could eat!
Smith: now you too can be a writer without all that pesky wri
Barker: this fucking sucks
Smith: ting
Smith: uh
Smith: wow uh so great feedback
Barker: this fucking sucks shit
Barker: do you have water in your brain
Smith: wow so i'm hearing a lot of words
King: how does this thing work?
Smith: well i took all your work & boiled it down
Smith: now you can push a button and have ersatz stephen king content
Smith: except you have to misspell stephen king for legal reasons
Smith: like when they make you say "cheez" instead of cheese
Barker: you fucking dipshit
Smith: wow good feedback!
Barker: you absolute clod
Smith: really just want to hear all viewpoints
Barker: you absolute fucking piece of human garbage
Barker: sorry did you want to chime in here edgar
Poe: no no you're doing fine
Smith: wow so all the writers really seem to hate my consolidated slurry machine
Smith: but Smith: all the dead-eyed blue check crypto weirdos seem to think it's great!
Smith: so who's to say what's good or bad?
***
[mysterious circle of robed figures]
JK Rowling: hello children
Rowling: i call before me...
Rowling: hadley freeman!
Hadley Freeman: d-dark lord?
Rowling: DO NOT SSSPEAK
Rowling: i am
Rowling: dissspleassed
Rowling: you promisssed you could deliver unto me margaret atwood
Rowling: and at thisss you failed
Freeman: atwood is wiley oh dark lord
Rowling: you promisssed you could deliver unto me judy blume
Rowling: and at thisss you alssso failed
Freeman: blume is crafty oh dark lord!
Freeman: one more chance dark lord! just one!
Freeman: i'll bring you
Freeman: i'll bring you
Freeman: i'll bring you sting!
Rowling: sssting?
Freeman: yes! sting!
Rowling: hmm
Rowling: now ssssting would be a fine prize
Rowling: a fine prize indeed
Rowling: you ssay you can get sssting
Freeman: oh yes your evilness your rottenness
Freeman: your most excellent cartoon villainess
Rowling: very well
Rowling: i sshall allow you
Rowling: thiss one chance
Freeman: oh thank you dark lord thank you!
Rowling: thiss one FINAL chance
Hadley Freeman: hi hadley freeman, legitimate journalist here, i'd like to interview sting, top song guy and singer of such hits as Stand and the Bee movie cameo
Sting: no thanks
Freeman:
Freeman: what
Sting: i'm declining the interview
Freeman:
Freeman: what
Rowling: did you get sssting?
Freeman: he declined the interview!
Rowling:
Rowling: wait he can do that?
Freeman: that's what i said!
Rowling: my god that wiley devil
Rowling: alwaysss two ssstepsss ahead!
Freeman: apparently my single-minded obsession with tricking celebrities into making anti-trans statements was the deal breaker
Rowling: but
Rowling: that'sss what makesss you a legitimate journalisst!
Rowling: that'sss literally the point of journalisssm!
Rowling: go back to sssting
Rowling: tell him i know the awful truth
Freeman: dark lord?
Rowling: sssting'ss not even hiss real name you know
Freeman: what?!
Rowling: yeah itsss gordon sshumway
Freeman: WHAT?!?
Freeman: i don't even know what to believe now
***
Stephen King: Submitted for the approval of the Midnight society i c-
Elon Musk: [rising from bushes] eyy stephano king
Musk: eyy you hear i fighta zuck? dissa tima for real
Musk: dissa time i no maka da bullshit
Musk: 100% you can trusta me dissa time
Musk: dissa time i mean it
Musk: dissa time i tella my mom 'eyyy shaduppayouface, you no tella me what to do!'
Musk: pretty cool, ey?
King:
Musk: yes yes
Musk: i AMA da pretty cool
Musk: ey stephano king issa pretty cool i fighta da zuck ey?
King: well sometimes my boy joe has disagreements with his little friends at school
Joe Hill: dad, i'm not a baby anymore
King: hush joe
King: you'll always be my special little guy no matter how big you are
Hill: daaad
King: sometimes my boy joe has disagreements with his little friends at school
King: and i tell him what i'll tell you
King: violence is never the answer
Musk:
King: have you tried just sitting down with this zuck boy and talking out your differences?
King: i just don't see why you have to fight
Musk: you shadda you face stephano king!
Musk: you notta the mama of me!
Barker: yeah so speaking of
Barker: what kind of approval are you seeking here anyway
Poe: clive
Barker: like do you want steve to be your dad or your son or what
Musk: i donta need stephano kings approval!
Musk: i gotta da approval offa my son!
Musk's Secret Child Roleplay Twitter Account: Datsa right! I lova my cool dad!
Musk: watch, he saya it again as i drinka dis cuppa water!
Elon Musk: eyy itsa me your funny pal elon! gonna fight da zuck, pow pow! big laughs! eyyy! Mark Zuckerberg: [flat, robotic intonation] gaze into my eyes, elon musk, and know the form of your destruction
Musk:
Zuckerberg: [flat, robotic intonation] make peace with your god
Zuckerberg: [flat, robotic intonation] men know me by many names, but to you i appear in the form of Shiva the Destroyer, know me by my garlands of skull & serpent. i ride a pale horse this day, elon musk
Musk:
Musk: [grabbing leg] ey! ey! charlie horse!
Musk: time out! time out!
***
[at unicorn fuck club]
Piers Anthony: ok guys get ready
Piers Anthony: it's time for PUN times with Piers Anthony!
Anthony: i think you'll all have a real SNAKE time!
Anthony: ANACONDA they're so funny!
Anthony: so bob basilisk, gooey goblin, and steve Stymphalian bird were walking on the beach
Anthony: when suddenly someone started shooting sea shells at them
Anthony: normally shells just lie on the beach
Anthony: but THESE shells were being shot at them
Anthony: these shells were being loaded into guns and shot at them
Anthony: propelled by gunpowder!
Anthony: in a manner quite unusual when it comes to shells in fact
Anthony: most peculiar!
Anthony: [turning to audience] can YOU guess the pun? turn the page for the answer
Anthony: in fact they were artillery shells!
Anthony: eh? eh? get it?
JRR Tolkien:
GRR Martin:
CS Lewis:
Anthony: well, if you don't like it, blame Jimmy B. (12) of akron, ohio
Anthony: anyway princess penelope comes by
Anthony: and she's all "oh no"
Anthony: "i'm at the beach"
Anthony: "guess i better..."
Anthony: "TAKE OFF MY PANTIES!!!"
JRR Tolkien:
GRR Martin:
CS Lewis:
Anthony: you guys she's taking off her panties
Anthony: so princess penelope hides deep in the bushes and looks this way and that just to make sure that no one can see her take off her panties
Anthony: but you know what she can't hide from?
Anthony: the author!
Anthony: it's too late, i've already seen everything
Anthony: guys for real though
Anthony: i totally saw EVERYTHING
Anthony: like, ALL her panties
Anthony: i saw them
JRR Tolkien:
Anthony: she was wearing them
Tolkien:
Anthony: pretty cool, huh?
JRR Tolkien: you know i'm just not gonna put any women in my books i think
Anthony: so just imagine if a sexy girl wore panties
JRR Tolkien: i can't imagine this
GRR Martin: no no he's on to something, i can picture this
Brian Jacques: [squeaking] i use a sewn-up maple leaf for underwear!
Anthony: ok now just imagine the panties
Anthony: oh boy you guys
Anthony: i don't know if i should say it
Anthony: it might be too hot
GRR Martin: say it!
Anthony: ok guys now just imagine
Anthony: the panties are
Anthony: pink
Anthony: oh ho ho i can't believe i said it!!!
Anthony: so just imagine the perkiest little pink panties you can
JRR Tolkien: wait isn't this story for kids?
Anthony: oh yeah there's nothing prurient or adult about this
Tolkien: ah ok
Anthony: these panties are being worn by a virginal 8 year old
Tolkien:
Anthony: so its fine