Ghosts of the Deep Wood

When did December get here? I can’t tell from the weather what season we’re in right now. One day it’s near 60 degrees outside, the next a cold wind and rainstorm is tearing down branches from the trees and littering the roads with debris. I went down to town this morning for some basic supplies and it looked fairly post-apocalyptic en route. Trash, fallen leaves and the odd roofing shingle or two blowing about aimlessly. People huddled under dark coats and hats. Buying canned goods and bottled water. Getting ready to hole up and wait for the end, I guess.

Somewhat of a stark contrast to the Christmas lights and decorated storefronts but let’s be honest. The holiday season looks to be abit half-assed this year. Folks are going through the motions but there’s no heart in it, it seems. Like just another masquerade, putting on the masks and costumes and parading along like automatons.

I’ve half a mind to seek out and find some real Christmas Spirit. Old fashioned comraderie and joy, the sort that warms the heart and inspires the soul. I should find it and get it inside me and then bring it to others, spread it like a virus. Through sexual intercourse.

That’s not likely to happen, though. I’m just like all the rest. I’ve got my supplies and The Compound is secure. I’m closing up the curtains and listening to Shortwave Radio signals. Seeking through the static ether for any sort of sign or warning.

There are sounds in the Deep Woods. There might be Ghosts in there, spectral and shimmering, shadowy and half-shaped. Lurking and leering and calling to us to come in. To wander into the Dark Heart of the Forest and stay a while. A long while.

How long can we resist?

I Knew I Felt Something Go Bump

I figured out what woke me up in the middle of the night last night and, for once, it wasn’t falling out of bed onto a broken bottle of Stoli.

It’s that Dark Galaxy crashing into the Milky Way.

How annoying, eh? Isn’t it enough when a bobcat gets stuck in the electric fence out back and spends the entire night screaming like some retarded tween at a New Moon premier.

Now it’s a massive cloud of hydrogen slamming into my galactic disc. Thank fuck for Ambien, that’s all I can say.

Im Haus

I’ve returned to the Bunker.

By that, my miniscule, psychotically devoted audience, I mean my Northeast Compound in Hooksett, New Hampshire. After 117 days living a Life on the Run, I have finally returned to the place I hold dearest. It is here that I will now speak to you from, likely forevermore, until the end of days.

Which might not be that far off, folks. Who knows?

Regardless, I come now here before you my single-digitally defined comrades, to speak to you in truth, of truth.

You know I love you all. But these are dark days. ‘Nuff said.

So a note or two about where I’ve been since I departed the Compound back in early June. You all recall I was under a bit of stress at times. And at other times. Maybe all the time.

So I needed to cut loose and get out of this fucking country just one last time before coming back here to stay. I ransacked my Compound, threw a few bits of clothing in a bag, grabbed some handy cash and hit the road. First stop, of course, Amsterdam.

Three days in various seedy bars drinking with cyber-neural surgeon (guys who can hardwire micro-data technology right into your cerebral cortex) and former black market arms dealer Pepe “Nightmare Fuck” Livingstone. We hit all the local dives hard, banged up on sour Russian vodka and cannabis by the mega-bud. His girlfriend, Louisa Blowthong, a left-leaning guerrila ninja ass-kicker from Paraguay, was along for the ride, making both of us look good. Picture a nubile, golden-brown Olympic Champion body and genuinely terrifying arsenal or prime ordinance and you’ve got Louie. She was wasting her time with Pepe and we all knew it but it didn’t stop us from having a great time. The night she threw down with hose Yakuza bozos in Chiba’s, you’d swear she was the Black-Racer himself. She turned those fuckers off like they were retractable pens. Click.

That’s the thing about having a great time like that. You don’t sweat the little bullshit that can drag you down in life. The worrying little bullshit. You know what I mean. You just roll with it all and have fun.

I scooted out of the Netherlands in late June, though, as much fun as it had been. Next stop, Prague where I followed any number of false leads in an attempt to track down Kevin Shields for an interview and more of his bullshit about an MBV reunion. Of course it never happend but I did manage to fall briefly in love with a political science major from Plzen. We both sobered up somewhere around the July 4th holiday when, I do believe, she got sick as fuck of my American-ness. Whatever. Not like I was going to propose.

July was a hot month, man. Especially on the French Riviera. There’s only on way to cool off, as far as I’m concerned, folks. Shed some clothing and let it all air out. I think I spent at least three weeks straight on one nude beach or another, soaking in the sun and the skin. There lyeth heaven, mes amis. Paradise.

Even further I wandered, beyond even those blissful heights of bodily ecstacy and relaxation. Good times, bad times, times that distort your soul. Strange times. Much of August was spent in spiritual pursuits that I won’t go into here in any detail. Such personal experiences are often left just as that, personal. If I ever deicde to speak of such things, well, you’ll know that dire times have finally come upon us all.

Anyway, now I’m back up here in beautiful NH in the fall. It’s nice but there’s a cold snap to the air and you can smell winter waiting around the corner somewhere. This Sunday features the fist N’oreaster of the season. Time to bunker down once again.

So, yeah. I’m here.

Won’t you join me?

Abandoned City

So Gorman Moloko has gotten himself involved with this band who’s producing some interesting late night sci-fi tinted, post-new wave oddness/goodness.

They’re called Abandoned City. Their first official release will be an e.p. called Untethered on Dark Heart Records.

Give them a try if you’re a stuck-out-of-time renegade from the early Eighties like I am.

Dave’s Gone Wild

Tonight’s Late Show with David Letterman is Must Watch TV in the Ken Socrates Household.

An Aging Dave Letterman at the 2009 Emmy’s

I know, I know, you still don’t know who’s house it is I’m hiding out at. Sorry again for the subterfuge. You know what it’s like to be Living A Life on the Run. Most of you do, anyway.

Thing is, Dave’s in trouble. You know it. I know it.

He’s done some shameful shit and he’s hurt his wife. This is not good, my friends. I know what it’s like to be married, you know. I know what it’s like to fuck it up, too.

We need to be there for Dave tonight, my friends. We need to support our old pal.

Remember. Dave got us through the fucking eighties, man. He kept us sane/insane. He entertained our twisted little minds every single lonely, alienated night back then. I believe he is a good and decent man, really, I do.

The least we can do is hang in there with the guy.

I’m Back…?

Or, rather, I’m not. I’m in an undisclosed location, nowhere near my home, still living on the run but now able to get internet access.

I’ll try to stay in contact as time goes on but I wanted to reassure you, my adoring audience that I am in fact alive and well.

Sort of.

More soon.

Ring Around

I just love Saturn.

Really, I do.

The State of Socrates

Sometimes when I want a quick, easy summary of what I’ve been doing here lately, sort of where my thoughts have been wandering, etc., I look at what search engine terms have been bringing people to this website.

Recent phrases used to find me here:

Crispin Glover Celebrates Christmas

Farewell Spanish Lady (what else is new)

Rosebuds “Fun Book”

Dr Who WGBH Tom Baker

Socrates Songs for Kids

Barvarian Hockey

Dirty Cocksucker

Plus one term I’m not entirely comfortable reprinting here.

So it seems I’m right where I need to be, thematically. Right on target.

Gotta go now.

Gotta finish recording that kid’s singalong album I’ve been working on.

Show Us Your V

The 14th Annual Ken Socrates “Show Us Your Empty Vodka Bottle” Contest is under way and the first few entries have arrived, forwarded to me by Stig Marmoset who’s job it is too screen out the really sick stuff. Those ones he keeps for himself and, he tells me, will someday be featured on a future pay-site of his called Abusinginanimateobjects.com.

Here are the folks first out of the gate which, considering the contest actually started in March, shows us that your basic Ken Socrates/Vodka enthusiast isn’t usually all that familiar with the term “motivation”.

Mishii & Takeshi

From Japan, where they still call me Kenny Sock-San!, we see the founders of the recently disbanded Kenny Sock-San Fan Club, Mishii Jojima and Takeshi Ota posing at a Kyoto bus station where they were obviously too drunk to notice that the man they had asked to snap this novelty photo of them was actually Japan’s notorious Bus Molester, something they would both later regret. Also, we can once again see first hand just how utterly goddamn funny those Japanese really are.

T.J. Crenshaw

A lot of you will recognize Vermont’s own T.J. Crenshaw, winner of last year’s awkwardly titled How Far Will You Go To Prove Your Ken Crush? sweepstakes. In fact, T.J. has entered every single contest we’ve held at the KSWNO since 1997, many of them multiple times under various alias’. So just for the record T.J., not only is that entry showing you in an, ahem, a compromised position with that Stoli bottle been ruled morally inappropriate for the contest but wearing an afro wig and calling yourself Jon Remery isn’t really fooling anyone. Thanks for the interest, though.

Carla & Heather

Carla Mitropoulos and Heather Shale, both bartenders at a local sports pub called Beaters, are some of my favorite admirers and not just because of their positive outlook on life and fondness for nude beaches. No, when a man spends his days deeply submerged in profound intellectual pursuits, wrestling with savage spritual demons, burning with the fevers or pure, unrestrained creativity, he sometimes needs a soft, understanding bosom to cradle his world weary head. When the burden becomes too much for me, Carla and Heather are the ones I call because they understand me. Plus, they’re always up for shots.

Brenda & Trisha

Now these two look like fun. Baltimore natives Brenda Cleggland and Trisha DeGauss claim they don’t drink to get drunk but “it seems to happen everytime, anyway”. An inseperable pair of gal pals who’ve come to be known as The Sirens of Last Call, their unusual entry in the contest contained a marriage proposal for Stig and an inquiry as to whether he had any “burly cousins”. Word on the street is they were both charter members of Maryland’s first female fight club.

So those are the first entries but hopefully not the last. There’s lots of time to enter as the contest runs until whatever time it is I finally get sick of seeing this shit. So get drinkin’.

Send all enties to: stig@kensocrates.com

Cheers!

Hockey Gone Wild

It came to me in a Fever Dream.

I’ve been somewhat ill lately (thanks for all the concern you bastards) and one night, while laying in bed sweating, tossing and turning, strange hallucinations and thoughts swirling through the dementia, it came to me. Like a vision. Pure, shining and bright.

Hockey Gone Wild

A place to express the passions that I and others feel about the Sport of Hockey and they way it should be played. A place to lay bare the beating heart of all that makes it the ultimate Man’s Game. Honor, Toughness, Pride. A Code that must be acknowledged and obeyed or Justice will be dealt out through the fists of those whose job is is to do so.

It’s Old Time Hockey. It’s the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers and the Chicago Blackhawks.

It’s Gordie Howe and Maurice Richard. It’s Terry O’Reilly and Cam Neely.

It’s Hockey Gone Wild.

Share and enjoy.