Jul 30, 2025
Patron Saint of Innocence Lost
"All your strength, all your rage, and you couldn't save her... But it's okay. She doesn't blame you. She never did."
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Patron Saint of Innocence Lost
"All your strength, all your rage, and you couldn't save her... But it's okay. She doesn't blame you. She never did."
The one demon Doomguy won’t kill
Bat-Mad Lib Eternal #32 completed by Doom Bunny and Grunion Guy
Hush punches Spoiler in the butt pustule while Batman forges Hush right in the ass.
The Familiar Discussion, Part VI: New This Season (Part Two!)
The third story new this season is called "Caged Hunt: Part One". It's a YouTube video. But it's in a book. I don't know how you transfer a YouTube video to a book but Danielewski has done it! I wonder if it works like a flip book? Nope! The video is all words anyway which seems like a waste of time. Why make a video out of words? And then why transfer the word video to pages?! Is this supposed to be clever? If my shoulder wasn't hurting so much, I'd throw this book at the wall right now! I guess the words are supposed to describe the images that wouldn't transfer correctly to paper. Or maybe Danielewski didn't have the rights to print the short film so he just decided to transcribe it. That's legal, right? I wonder if I can get a job transfering Internet porn videos to books in this way? I bet I'd sell millions of books! In the video of "Caged Hunt", the stars identities are disguised by pixelated bars across their eyes. So in the book version, their names are blacked out! But you can still sort of read their names anyway. That's because pixelating a person's eyes doesn't really hide who they are! I'm pretty sure I'd still recognize Doom Bunny by his stupid goatee and shiny bald head! The guys in the video drink and watch porn and think about hunting and snort cocaine. Then they take out a bowling ball bag full of money and they all orgasm in their pants. I wonder if I can find that video on YouTube?! No. Just other videos of caged hunts. That's where hunters pretend like they're tough guys and hunt poor wild animals that are weak from hunger and tied to a tree and probably have a bag over their head or something. I guess you can make good money doing it. At least a bowling ball bag full of it! After that is some graphic about Rain, Signiconic, Violence, Planetarity, and Custody. Looking up the definition of "signiconic," I just get hits on Danielewski's The Familiar! That's no help! How am I supposed to know what it means if Danielewski just made it up! According to the defintion I just read that I'm assuming was Mark's definition, it seems the meaning is basically the thing he's doing with the "Caged Hunt" video. He's making everything more complicated by reducing visuals to words and making visuals do the work of words and probably assigning his own random meaning to all of it! What a pretentious twat! Apart from that, I have no idea what the graphic represents. After the strange graphic is the last New This Season Coming Attraction! It's about some cave kids who do some face painting in a language made up of gestures and sounds that the words on the page fail to accurately represent. But at least I can understand the words! I can also understand their fear of grown-ups! I definitely don't understand why they're not excited about the grown-ups all being dead. Anyway, knowing the grown-ups are all dead, the boy attempts to make themselves more powerful using the face paint. Then the girl figures out how to keep the fire alive and the boy gets scared of her power. But then he comes back because, you know, she's a girl! Then they probably run out and do it. I'm totally understanding this book so much right now! Although the book hasn't even started yet. So maybe I'm getting ahead of myself! --Grunion Guy
The Familiar Discussion, Part V: New This Season (Part One!)
The first story new this season is "Our Common Horrors: Astral Omega". It's Part One of a five part message from some "humans" at the end of all time and space sent back to the people of the 21st Century. The speaker tries to explain how unexplainable the human race has become to a person of the 21st Century, there at the end of all things. Yet still two points of commonality link the people of the past with the "people" of the future. One of those is death. Even though they have become essentially immortal, they still must succumb to the end of all things. The end of time. The end of space. Those sending this message accept the inevitablility of non-existence even as they, as we do, continue to struggle with the mystery of sentience brought to an end. The other trait they share with us is a penchant for war in times of disagreements. And there are "people" of the future who believe that they can still avoid death. They can avoid the end of existence, no matter what the cost. The speaker doesn't explain what that might be but I can think of only one way to avoid the end of time: time travel! The faction of future "humans" who we could never hope to recognize are probably going to travel back in time to survive! Probably back to the 21st Century! Probably to live in the body of a cat adopted by a little girl! Or maybe not. This is only a trailer, after all! It's not supposed to have anything to do with the actual movie! Doesn't Danielewksi know how trailers work? Although this movie is 27 parts long, so maybe it's a trailer for a future part? The second story new this season is called "Tom's Crossing: 'Even in His Feet'". It's the story about the death of Tom! That's his crossing! Unless the crossing is actually the place Tom calls The Crossing! That's a possibility too! The "even in his feet" bit is about the cancer being in Tom's feet. I don't think it means more than that. Does it? Words are slippery! The story about Tom is a story about something. It's so obviously about something that I can't stop thinking about the something it's so obviously about. It's like, there's this guy, and he laughs, and he helps out this kid, and he makes this kid promise to do this thing with these horses at this place! Man! Totatlly something! --Grunion Guy!
The Familiar Discussion, Part IV
Let's quickly discuss the scroll of production companies and faux advertisements that make up the beginning of this book. Just like the spheres on the inner covers that I'm surmising are representations of the characters in the book, the faux adverts might mean something to the narrative. But since I haven't read the narrative, I'll just briefly mention them for future reference: Production Company 1: A Circle Round A Stone Production (picture of rocks with lines of minerals in them) Production Company 2: Pantheon (More than reading) Mini-Ad 1: L.A. Police Mini-Ad 2: The Urbarn Pet Mini-Ad 3: Galvadyne, Inc. "Own the future" Mini-Ad 4: ZSL Mini-Ad 5: Re-adventure (with a chrome mobile home) Also in this strange scroll of generally only seen before movies ephemera is a question. Like how they have quizzes before movies! The question a quiz about who said this quote: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." 1) Stephen Colbert 2) Zenon Pylyshyn 3) François-Marie Arouet LJ 4) Zach Galifanakis 5) René Descartes I know it isn't an option but I think the answer is Jon Bon Jovi. And finally a shot of a Go gameboard with three black stones surrouding a white stone. "Black to capture White stone." Is this one of those board game puzzles where I have to figure out the answer? Because I'm pretty sure I've got this one figured out! And I did it in like no time at all! And without even knowing the rules to the game of Go! After these pages that most people skip because they're getting popcorn or going to the bathroom or texting on their phone, the lights in the room where you're reading the book dim and the real show begins with this message: NEW THIS SEASON So now it's time for the trailers! I mean "now" as in "the next time I pick up this book to read some of it!" I should probably pick up the pace or I'll be reading this series slower than Danielewski writes it! -- Grunion Guy!
The Familiar Discussion, Part Three: The Epigraph! "Kids, man. They never know when they are." -- Shiela Nightingale Right?! I don't know who Shiela Nightingale is and I haven't bothered to Google her (just in case she's really scary and linked to an audio file of a scream) but she sure packs a lot of meaning into such a simple quote. Or am I putting all of the meaning into it? Does that matter?! Am I screwing up already?! I'm only a few pages in! Anyway, the import of history means nothing to a child, and why should it? For them, existing is history. Discovering their genitals is history. Picking their nose until it bleeds is history. You only discover when you are after you've made a pretty good examination of who you are. I mean, sometimes. There are a lot of fucking dumbass adults who don't realize when they are either! But that's because my statement is that true and those adults haven't really examined who they are yet! Unless drinking a case of Zima and trying to fuck your cousin counts as self-examination! --Grunion Guy
The Familiar Discussion, Part Two (this is going to have a lot of parts!)
When I read a book, I always start with the title. It's like the most important part after the inside parts. But since I haven't gotten to the inside parts, it's totally the most important part right off the bat. It's the part that makes a person looking at it in the bookstore while stroking their chin, "I hope people are looking at me looking smart as I look at this book! I hope this is a smart person book! It doesn't have any pictures in it and it's pretty fat, so I bet people are thinking, 'Look at that fatty try to read! What a smart guy!'" So what does this name conjure up when one reads it? Notice how I used the word "conjure"?! That might be a hint as to one of the things I think about when I see the word familiar! Besides a witch's cat, I also think of things that are known, or comfortable. Being that this is a Danielewksi book, I have to think he's, once again, going to subvert the idea of what is comfortable. In House of Leaves, he took a home and made it unknowable. That's like my worst nightmare! Remember how there was a 5 and 1/2 minute hallway? I call my bathroom the 5 and 1/2 hour bathroom! Another word that is in "Familiar" is Liar! Like Doom Bunny! So I bet that the comfortable will be distorted through lies, maybe "family lies" because familiar looks like Familial and Liar sort of jammed together in a super sexy way. But most of all, the name probably has something to do with a cat because there are cats all over the cover. Also because Doom Bunny already told me the final line of the book is something like "It's a cat, stupid!" Maybe the stupid wasn't part of the quote and just an insult. The subtitle, "One Rainy Day in May," doesn't mean anything to me. I mean, I guess the story takes place in May. On this one day. When it was raining. I don't know why there are lots of tiny pink cats on the cover and one white cat. I think it's probably a printing error. Especially since they forgot to completely cover the spine and back cover in little pink cat heads. Also on the back cover is a drawing of Hunter S. Thompson for some reason! Next comes the hard part where I have to actually read the book! --Grunion Guy!