I apologize, but tonight’s episode will be delayed until tomorrow.
I hate when I have to say it, but I promise tomorrow’s Mulligan will be worth it if you’re a fan of Billy Winnipeg’s fisticuffs.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upJuupWjcx8]
This was exactly the Monday antidote I required.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIoG4PlEPtY]
I eagerly await the news show that’s a combination of auto-tuned stories and those fantastic Tawainese digital re-creations of vaguely true events.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLFRtleBAlo]
This is just sort of an odd personal note, but:
As I’ve been using as an excuse for tardiness lately, we’ve recently moved and are still settling in to our new digs. In a quest for snack food, and to explore the town a bit, Opopanax and I took a walk. Stumbling upon a 24-hour chain convenience store, we pushed inside, and, after some browsing, Opop convinced me to pick up some chips and dip.
Now, I didn’t start off particularly excited about the idea, but a few hours later I was daydreaming about salt and dill, so I decided to crack open our loot.
I wasn’t the first however – the Philadelphia had already been opened. A single, deep-furrowed rut had been pulled from it: someone had preemptively dipped into our goods.
Maybe it was for the best, however, as we realized during transport to the garbage that it was a month past due anyhow.
Not a good omen for future use of the store, but now, even this morning, I’m left craving salty, creamy, pickle taste.
Just a quick note to point out that Sam Van Olffen, one of my favourite artineers, put together a tribute to Frank Frazetta. (Not pictured at left.)
Pulp was obviously deep in Frazetta’s veins, so much so that they’d likely have needed a sieve if he were to visit a blood bank, but for my money Van Olffen is the pulp of our times – that man can attach a rotary barreled chain-gun to anything.
I ran across this bit of news, and my imagination found it entertaining to no end:
NEW ORLEANS — The whooping crane — one of the world’s most endangered birds and one of the first animals on the U.S. endangered list — could be back in Louisiana’s wetlands as early as February under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal.
The long-legged birds with the distinctive call haven’t lived in the wild in Louisiana since 1950. – Washington Examiner
“So?” I can already hear you saying, but the best part comes next:
Under the plan, young birds would be released in a pen in Vermilion Parish, about 125 miles west of New Orleans in Louisiana’s bayou country, after they are raised by people wearing shapeless white “crane suits.” – Washington Examiner
Now, I understand the reality of this situation is captured by the image above, but, when I first read this, I couldn’t help but grow giddy at the idea that furries in poorly made mascot costumes were out roaming the bayous of Louisiana attempting to feed Whooping Cranes.
That said, I’m not sure I’d want to eat anything being offered by the fellow below – to me that suit looks more like the prime candidate for a low budget slasher flick.
The Vengeance of CRANEHAND.
Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Sixty-Nine.
Tonight, we present Koyle’s Ferry: A Blackhall Tale, Part 3 of 3
Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)
This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Relic Radio family of podcasts.
Jim, host of the Relic Radio podcasts, is a man of mystery, suspense, thrills, chills and even science fiction.
Hear his dulcet tones, as well as hours of fantastic old time radio content at RelicRadio.com, or search for it via iTunes.
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
In this final chapter of our current serialization, Blackhall calls upon John Koyle, the ferryman, to discuss his recent travels.
Flash Pulp 069 – Koyle’s Ferry: A Blackhall Tale, Part 3 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
As night once again began to fall, the chill water held little hospitality. Even then, Blackhall felt that he could only wait and hope the carcajou moved along of its own accord. He’d made his way, with careful precision, as near to shore as he dare – and yet he could still hear the animal feeding, and he had no interest in overusing his well stretched good fortune.
The glutton had spent the long hours of daylight working at picking clean the barricade of the dead. As Thomas attempted to remain deathly silent, the thing would balance along the fallen timber, stopping once it was ready to pull one of the ferryman’s bobbing victims from the hooks of the jagged tree limbs. It would then drag the intended meal to shore and begin its grizzly consumption. The process struck the nearly drowned man as being carried out as tidily as a scullery maid might purchase a packet of cow flesh at the butchers.
Although the thing was but the size of a large dog, the scraps of half-eaten attire that littered the animal’s chosen dining hall spoke to its fixedness of appetite.
As it ate, the frigid water ran endlessly over Blackhall, drawing the heat away until his kidneys ached at the flow which rocked him against the tree frames. His hands had long numbed, and were now little more than frozen talons. As he felt the weight of the scavenger once again settle onto its feeding path, he nearly wept.
Even over the burble, he could hear it snuffling at the the water’s edge, inspecting for further meat.
He briefly considered simply letting go – given his exhausted state, a sure death, but certainly better than being discovered by the approaching carrion eater. He’d once seen such a beast, smaller still than the one with which he was currently engaged, kill a bull moose that had become ensnared in deep snow. As the bull bellowed his dismay, the claws of the hunter had quickly carried out bloody work upon the blanket of white.
Mairi’s voice came to him then, from a place deep in his ear, where the cold could not reach. It spoke to him the words of her letter, which still lay sealed in the container that rhythmically tapped his chest in the draft and draw of the perpetual deluge.
Thomas –
If you need me, I shall come crashing as if the ocean upon the shore; I shall come running as if a river rushing from the great water; I shall come thundering as if a storm, laying low the land with flood and thunder and fire.
Always,
Mairi
A promise made on her part, and a standard to meet on his.
He felt the beast close now, but his patience was at an end. If he was meant to die, he knew it was meant to be on his feet, walking the long path to his dead wife.
The weight of his frozen body, as he pulled himself onto the gnarled pine, brought forth a burly grunt from his frost-burnt lungs. He’d not realized the proximity of the animal, and for the briefest of moments both stood still at their sudden encounter.
His foot moved with an alacrity that he could not account for, and that the glutton had obviously little suspected. His furious boot, powered by the expenditure of his frustration, sent the wolverine flying into the water, as if no more than a house dog at the brute-end of its master’s wrath.
It was not the animal that lay at the heart of his anger, however, and so began Blackhall’s return along the river’s edge, during which he could only be thankful that his course was so clearly marked by the banks of the rushing water. Each step brought another measure of warmth, but it was nought in comparison to the heat of the rage that built in his breast.
There’d been little opportunity to think as he’d clutched the deadfall, but the long path to his point of origin left much time to ruminate; on the near nature of his survival; on the treacherous and petty nature of the murderous thief; on the near end of his search for Mairi – and thus her eternal loss.
As he finally broke into the clearing of Koyle’s homestead, his hands shook and his jaw worked at a slow grinding of its own accord.
His legs picked up speed as they carried him around the corner of the residence, but he was brought to a halt by the sight of the man, in his boat, nearly half way to the far bank. It was impossible to know if he’d simply gone for a pleasure journey, or if another passenger had been consigned to float downstream, but the ferryman rode alone.
“Mayhaps it is my turn to shorten the journey.” Blackhall said, pushing open the door to the house. Quickly locating two oil lamps, he lit each from the morning fire’s coals and carried both back into the creeping sunlight.
He did not look to measure his transgressor’s progress as he exited and approached the first of the barns. Throwing wide the doors he made quick work of the pens that held the cows, and the catching fire amongst the straw brought further incentive to their evacuation.
He was not so expedient in the second barn.
Where he’d expected further live stock, instead he encountered something he could only consider a site of ritual. The cavernous walls of the outbuilding were filled with the stolen clothing of the dead, pinned, as if bugs, into fleshless tableaus of civilization. On his right the cocked arms of an empty dress seemed to pour and offer tea to a vacant suit. The pair appeared as if kneeling upon a blanket, on which also rested the swaddling of an unseen child.
With closer inspection, Thomas identified the scene as cleverly hung with nails. There was little space left for further work, even the hayloft ladder was adorned as if a small child were attempting the climb.
Ripping down the mocking imitation of life, he made his way to the upper area. The loft itself was also full, but with the husks of emptied luggage, and items likely as yet unsorted.
It was his hat that he first identifed: placing the broad brim upon his head, he was thankful that Koyle’s avarice must have lead the ferryman to pluck it from the water. His satchel and Baker rifle were also amongst the discards, but a search by the light of the remaining hurricane lamp did little towards locating his sabre. It was only once he’d descended the ladder and made further inspection of the displayed scenes that he located his weapon.
The knicked blade rest upon two long spikes, the surrounding representation made to look as if the shell of a royal were knighting the shell of a peasant.
Thomas could take no more. Lifting the hilt with his free hand, he cast the remaining lantern against the far wall. Three figures, formed to mimic men covering mouth, eyes and ears, quickly caught flame. In moments the fire had engulfed many of Koyle’s impersonations.
Kicking loose a slat from the ladder, Blackhall wrapped the end in a still unsinged undershirt, and set it to the heat.
He did not care to leave a job half finished, and he had mind to return once again to the main-house.
His travels were cut short by the barn-owner’s appearance at the door, the billowing black having drawn him back. The dismay on the ferryman’s face was drawn sharp by the visage of the frontiersman approaching from amongst the smoke of his works, a sabre in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.
He’d given his intended speech much consideration as he’d approached, and yet, at the sight of Koyle, Blackhall’s tongue was laid heavy by the weight of his anger.
“How many wives? How many husbands?” was all he could manage.
Thomas did not match Koyle’s pace as the man sprinted back into the yard, but he moved steadily on, following him to the river’s edge. The boatman set his craft upon the water in a single smooth motion, but his rowing had made little distance as Blackhall took the shore, and it was a short throw to deposit the smoldering slat upon the floor of the launch.
The oarsman had no choice but to carry the load, as his need for haste was made clear by the unslinging of Thomas’ rifle. Before he’d covered a quarter of the distance, a blaze danced along the stern.
At the halfway point, Blackhall took steady aim and shattered an oar as it plunged against the water.
Koyle began to curse his former victim extravagantly, although few of his words actually reached the Rideau’s eastern bank. Thomas replied by applying his Baker rifle to drilling two sharp holes at the boat’s bobbing tide-mark.
With a final shout, the ferryman lept from his sinking pyre.
The man’s ragged form slipping into Ophelia’s rapids was the last any but the glutton would see of him.
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Last night, while doing some poking around the internets, I discovered something previously unknown to me:
The turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) of the Americas is one of the only bird species that has a sense of smell, which is utilized to find carrion – jrank.com
Seemed like sort of a neat fact, but little did I know I’d just stepped into a major avian controversy.
Some follow up research brought along this bit of info from Stanford:
There has been a long controversy over the degree to which vultures use odor to help them find food. Mostly the argument has been over whether sight or smell is more important, but it has also been suggested, by those with a flair for the absurd, that vultures listen for the noise of the chewing of carrion-feeding rodents or insects or even use an as yet undiscovered sense. Nonetheless, the sight-odor argument remains unsettled. While Turkey Vultures, for example, seem to have a good sense of smell, quite likely it is not good enough to detect the stench of decomposing food from their foraging altitudes. – Stanford
So is the idea that most birds can’t smell false as well?
There’s some confusion on the topic, and some interesting research:The sense of smell seems better developed in some avian groups than others. Kiwis, the flightless birds that are the national symbol of New Zealand, appear to sniff out their earthworm prey. […]
When they return at night from foraging in the Bay of Fundy, Leach’s Storm-Petrels appear to use odor to locate their burrows on forested Kent Island, New Brunswick. They first hover above the thick spruce-fir canopy before plummeting to the forest floor in the vicinity of their burrows. Then they walk upwind to them, often colliding with obstacles on the way- Stanford
Actually, all that plunging and colliding sounds a lot like my college days.
Just a quick note to cast further light on the barnacle-encrusted jabbering of Captain Pigheart, yarn spinner and peglegged entrepreneur.
He’s a favourite around the skinner.fm labs, and he now has mp3 versions of his misadventures available for sale.
[It should be noted, in case you can’t scrape together a couple of doubloons, that most of his recountings are available to be read on his site].
A silent sample:
It were the kind of island where a man longs to bury his treasure. Alas, me gold was now being colonised by humourous octopi who amused themselves by hurling coins at me splashing crew.Now I knows ye may be afeard for the safety of meself and me crew and yet ye should worry little, for this maroonin’ lark is bread and butter to us pirate types. Ye forestation were lush as Eve’s own lady garden before she choked on the serpent’s apple, so we’d not want for sustenance. In time we’d assemble a rude craft to take us back to our wives and other foes. In the meantime we rigged shelters and foraged amongst the local flora for spit-roastable fauna.
– From Pigheart’s Tale of The Delicious Sweet-Monkey
I wasn’t aware of this story until it jumped out at me from the CNN front page, so I apologize if I’m getting on the bandwagon late in the game, but –
It may seem silly to think a fellow like Jobs would be looking to acquire ninja stars, but I believe he’s the right age to have gone through that bleak period of North American history in which every “cool guy” bedroom had a set of shurikens, as ordered from the back of a magazine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he spent no little time in his youth practicing with a homemade set of nunchucks while staring at a Farrah Fawcett poster.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHyEIbBnzYM]
Personally, I’ll stick with the classic ThinkGeek product, the Ninja Star Coat Hook.
Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Sixty-Eight.
Tonight, we present Koyle’s Ferry: A Blackhall Tale, Part 2 of 3
Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)
This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Relic Radio family of podcasts.
Horror, suspense, laughs; Relic Radio has hundreds of hours of quality entertainment, and you don’t even need to construct or align a crystal set.
Find it at RelicRadio.com, or search for it via iTunes.
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
In the second chapter of our current serialization, we obtain a glimpse of a younger Thomas, even as our hero is carried further off-course by the hands of fate, and John Koyle.
Flash Pulp 068 – Koyle’s Ferry: A Blackhall Tale, Part 2 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Other than what he carried with him, rituals, promises and habits were all that Thomas Blackhall had to guide him through the primeval forest.
Even as he was pitched through the furious water, a combination of the three were again what saved him.
Years earlier, well before his journey to recover Mairi, or his encounter with the ferryman, he’d stood on a small hillock outside the city of Parma, a dead boar at his feet. As he’d shouldered his spent rifle, he’d thought himself the saviour of a frail woman of no less than eighty, and, given the tusks and speed of the rushing beast, he’d expected a look of thanks, or even fear, upon his approach – instead he’d seen naught but glee.
His understanding of the local form of Latin had been poor, and the woman’s vernacular was rapid fire. She seemed to have questions, but he could only shrug. After a moment she’d raised her shoulders in exchange, then begun to fold back a thick woolen sleeve.
Working free her forearm, she’d plunged it deep into the dead beast’s throat; with a sharp tug, and a moist pop, an ornate woven sack had come spilling from between its jaws.
Despite his earlier considerations, it was Blackhall who stood flummoxed. The woman had wasted no time in rummaging through the sack, a steady stream of indecipherable commentary pouring from her lips as she inventoried with nimble fingers. Turning on Blackhall, she’d pulled free a roughly hewn rawhide necklace from amongst her spoils, a milky stone dangled from its loop.
She’d thrust it at him.
“No worries, I’m glad to have been of assistance,” he’d replied, sure she understood none of it.
Shaking her head at his ignorance, she’d dropped the stone into her mouth, then begun inhaling and exhaling dramatically while miming as if swimming.
The show was enough that he’d accepted the token on her second offering. Having settled accounts, she had turned on the boar, delivering a swift kick to the corpse’s belly, then galloped down the slope at a speed he’d known he could only hope to match with the most agile of horseflesh.
It was the next day, after he’d spent the morning exploring the bed of a nearby stream with the stone lodged firmly in his sealed mouth, that he’d begun to understand the extent of the gift he’d received.
In time he grew used to using the artifact to expedite his fishing, and it had long become habit to grasp for the stone at the point of any submergence.
Still, as he rushed through Ophelia’s rapids, he would have had little chance to reach for his token if it had not been for the water tight container in the breast pocket of his great coat; the container in which the yellowing final letter from his wife rested alongside his sheaf of smoking papers.
In his half-conscious state, the bobbing package, plucked by the current, felt as if the fingers of Mairi herself, attempting to snatch him from an unwelcome dream. The tug pulled him from the deepest black, although his body had little left to give as he struggled to place the milky stone between his jaws. The rock in place, he swallowed around it, clearing his mouth of water in spite of the belly-full he’d already involuntarily drank.
Panic was the enemy then – he knew enough to save his strength for such a time as he might require it, but, even with his breath recovered, his muscles longed to fight the current; to kick free to the shore. By force of will he waited, patient against the tumbling darkness of the encompassing water.
His perseverance was rewarded.
Without warning he found himself ensnared in a net of fallen dead pines. His position was awkward – he was well below the surface – and yet he was glad to have solidity onto which to grasp. With only a brief pause, he began to pick a careful route amongst the jagged ends, climbing the wavering branches.
As he neared the surface, his hand encountered another surprise: where he had expected a thick protrusion of pine, he came away instead with a pliant human arm. He broke the surface, even as he had hold of the aberration with his free hand, and was taken aback to see there was naught attached to the appendage.
He cast it into the stream.
The flow immediately carried it once again into the waterlogged barricade.
Taking a moment to breath naturally, his gaze moved over the length of the obstruction which had halted his progress. His eyes encountered many patches of coloured cloth caught in the wooden spines.
Turning towards shore, he found himself facing the rotting visage of a woman. Maggots had taken root amongst her cheeks, writhing nubs indicating the progress of their consumption.
It was the low growling beyond, however, which left him longing for the Baker rifle he’d left in the ferryman’s indelicate care.
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.