Welcome to Tuesday Morning Commute! I’m busier than a mofuckah’ here the last week of the semester. Students coming out of the woodwork, not wanting to fail. Tutees wanting me to salvage papers last moment. And grading! Oh, the fucking grading. But I’m almost at the end. I can see six weeks of gluttony, literature, and gaming right around the corner. Here’s what I’m looking forward to this week though. The materials that are dragging me through this sad limp to the finish.

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It’s true. Nature doesn’t fucking care. About you. About me. About the flitting, infinitesimal blip on the Cosmic Radar that is Humanity. And man, that’s fine. That’s cool. We’re all going to be dead. Dead for a lot longer than we’re alive. Nature’s just going to carry on. We won’t register. It doesn’t matter. What to do in the face of such Truth? Keep rollin’ that rock. Have a wonderful time while you’re here. Make your own meaning.

Here’s a quiet Monday Morning Commute, as I’m surrounded by the Indifferent but Beautiful Nature here in Nova Scotia.

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Crack open a pint of your preferred Esophageal Lubricant and stay awhile. For many that’s some bougie hard alcohol on the rocks. For others, unrefined and pinned to the Great Wall of Dementia, it’s seventy-three Diet Dews with a splash of Heart Palpitations. Whatever way the arrow of your taste bends, you’re welcome here. ‘Cause this is Weekend Open Bar.

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It’s the Weekend, folks. Now this can mean many things! Maybe it means you work. Maybe it means you don’t. Maybe you’re getting drunk! Maybe you’re surfing the Omniverse in a home-built Slipstream Time-Space Shuttle. Who the fuck knows, it’s a wild world.

But whatever you’re doing, know one thing. This is Weekend Open Bar. Where we can all come together no matter what we’re doing to share in the madness of the weekend. Proclamations of Love, Condemnations of Marvel, Wild Animated Gifs of Chris Evans or Eva Green. It’s all welcome here.

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It’s Monday.

Driving to work this morning, I saw a BMW pulled over in the breakdown lane. Hazards flashing. Black smoke billowing out from under the hood. The middle-aged driver pulled himself through the open sunroof, stood upright as though he were First Man emerging from the primordial birth canal, shook his balled-up fist at the sky, and let loose a guttural wail that cut through the nonsense-talkers inside of my radio-box. His briefcase was launched onto a station wagon, in the process cracking its windshield and scaring the illegal immigrants riding inside. He then slipped, fell off of the roof, and got to his feet just in time to spit blood into my open passenger side window as I drove by.

In my rear view, I saw him whip out his dick while strangling himself with his tie.

It’s Monday.

As such, it’s my pleasure to welcome you to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! This is the spot where we share our panaceas for work-induced ennui and existential fatigue. After I show you the cocktail I’ll be using, hit up the comments section and show off your own self-medications.

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Welcome to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE – OL’s weekly show-and-tell session. I’m going to give you a peek at some of the bits of entertainment that’ll keep me from swearing off our oppressive society, giving away all my worldly possessions, and then fleeing to the wilderness so I can die in a van.

After reading about the destinations of my entertainment-excursions, you’re encouraged to hit up the comments section so you can show off your own itinerary.

Let’s rock.

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And so I take my leave of OL for the day. Momentarily I shall be boarding a bus to New Jack City to see one of my fave bands in some sort of 20th anniversary show. I leave behind many a wonderful things, but more than most, Omega Level. Being an unemployed graduate student, I have far too much time on my hands for blogging and the such.

Instead, of you know, doing actual school work.

It is with tear-stuffed eye-sockets that I take my leave of OL. Like a neurotic parent I have already discussed my absence with Pepsibones.

Ian: Can you please, please post something.

Pepsibones: We’ll see, I may have something.

Ian: No please, can you just update something?

Pepsibones: Mayhaps.

Ian: …

Pepsibones: Mischevious smile

It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, that’s half our conversations go. I plead with Pepsibones for something, he smiles and quasi-commits before disapparating into the miasma.

There’s a certain anxiety that comes from not posting and keeping connected to OL. Since, you know, if you don’t post content, people don’t keep comin’ to this joint for the find introspective witticisms. Or the mentions of cocks and dong-rubbing. Both I mean, aren’t those the same thing?

The anxiety is, of course, compounded by the fact that I’m a nervous wreck, and a perpetual worry machine. I’m the definition of a homebody, and whenever I’m asked to leave the Dungeon of Horrors and Polygons, I hyper-ventilate. I told my girlfriend OMFG I WILL MISS YOU, and she’s all like “You’re leaving for a day, pfft”, which, of course, in the mind of a worry-wart only exacerbates the anxiety.

But I’ll see you fucks tomorrow evening. Be well, make good life choices!

There’s cookies in the cabinet and pizza money on the table!

To the two or three people who actually frequent this site/blog/source of banality and vulgarity, it may be apparent that we’ve been more quiet than usual here. With the daily LOST ramblings taking up a vast majority of my mental capacity, I’ve been shying away from my usual comic book and video game ramblings.

This is all compounded by my sorry ass starting graduate school this week. And it isn’t to say I won’t have time for OL, but rather I’ve been thrown off my schedule and I’m trying to cobble together something that approximates functionality. I’m like a tard, yes a tard. If you alter the time that I’m supposed to eat my bologna sandwich I start to freak the fuck out.

I’d like to provide some programming notes, if you will.

• Monday Morning Commute comes out every Monday. It’s where I tell you what I’m digging. theoretically, you join in the fun. It’s slop, and vapid, but what is the internet for, if for not slop and vapidity?
• Remember That Time On LOST will be ending on the first day of the new season. However, I’m going to kick off This Week on LOST, so we can all gather around after the episode and speculate and masturbate. This will be posted every Wednesday.
• Variant Covers, the weekly round-up of superhero vomit dropping onto comic book shelves will be returning next week. This will be posted every Tuesday.
• Images & Words, Pepsibones’ comic book pick of the week, is a Thursday operation. I think he didn’t post this week because he was busy sculpting animals out of body hair and paste, screaming at the sky that there is no escape, only lateral movement. This will be posted every Thursday. [Update – Pepsibones managed to stop shaking his fist & screaming at the “Bearded Sky-Man” long enough to post this week’s Images &Words]
• This Week On 24 will start today, and continue to be posted every Tuesday. This show sucks.
• Friday Brew Review still comes every Friday, because Pepsibones is an alcoholic.

Other than that, party on. I’ll still be posting general impressions and reviews of video games I’m rocking out to, references to latex tentacle porn, and immaturity. Strap-in.

As intimated in previous post, OCTOBERFEAST is going to get pretty damn metal. Since its inception heavy metal has been identified as sharing genetic material with Halloween — a predilection for the occult, the subversion of the innocent and a profound respect for Satan. Of the metal family tree, the cousin most closely related to Hallow’s Eve would have to be DEATH METAL!

Hailing from the uber-metal Sweden, Opeth are goddamn masters of heavy metal. The mindchild of Mikael Akerfeldt, Opeth can alternatively play the heaviest shit imaginable and ballads that will make you weep. Unlike a lot of metal acts, Akerfeldt’s growls are balanced with a crooning sweet enough to lullaby a baby to sleep. With stylistic versatility, musical virtuosity and a knack for tune-crafting, Opeth are in a league of their own.

Yes, these Swedish rockers are capable of holding their own against the songwriters of most genres. But this is OCTOBERFEAST, so I’m going to focus in on Opeth’s ability to conjure the Devil. In fact, I’m fairly certain that The Grand Conjuration is about just such a divinely-defiant act.

The Grand Conjuration is the seventh track of Ghost Reveries, a loose concept album [arguably] about one man’s emotional distress after killing his own mother.  This track in particular  seems to be some sort of an appeal to the Dark Lord himself.

The hands of Satan
Assembling his flock.
Pale horse rider
Scouring the earth.

Whispered conjuration –
A belief takes form.
Choking hand tapping
The veins in your throat.

His orders in your mouth
A decree for domination.
Beneath the tides of wisdom
Spins the undertow of hate.

I’m not 100% sure what the above lyrics mean, but I know that they’re fucking evil. I can just picture a dark priest from a Stephen King novel reciting those lines as he prepares to sacrifice a school bus of Girl Scouts.

As an added bonus, the music video for The Grand Conjuration is a perfect treat for any OCTOBERFEAST evening. In addition to the standard “dudes in an empty warehouse” motif, the video features trash-can fires, rats, and interrogations conducted by a creep who looks like a  cross between Zorro and Frank Miller’s The Spirit (yes — Frank Miller’s, not Will Eisner’s).

Also, because Gene Hoglan was touring with Opeth at the time he makes an appearance. An automatic +5 points.

I’m not sure if the Devil listens to music. But if He does, I’d like to think He’s an Opeth fan.

Today is the first day of October, unofficially the sickest month of all. Although September and November try to represent, October is autumn. This is the month you use for apple-picking, seasonal beers, hayrides, frolics in pumpkin patches, and all that other good stuff. Living in New England, I get to see sick foliage every time I step outside. In a sense, life is good.

But most importantly, October is all about Halloween.

Question: Is there a better holiday?

Answer: No.

Christmas? Thanksgiving? Arbor Day? Fuck that. Halloween is a celebration of costumes, free candy, horror movies, vandalism, alcohol consumption, Satanism, and carved-out pumpkin-decapitations. At a concert a few years back, I heard Mikael Akerfeldt describe Halloween perfectly: “All Hallow’s Eve…Will you trick and treat? Or get drunk and fuck?”

In honor of Halloween and its preceding month, I am presenting Omega-Level’s First (and Last) Annual OCTOBERFEAST. Once a day, I am going to post a video that has a connection to either Halloween or October. Sometimes, the connection will be clear and solid. Other times, the connection will be tenuous at best (probably when I try to post after doing the Friday Brew Review). But at the very least, I’m helping you get into the holiday spirit.

So, without further adieu…

The goddamn Monster Mash: