We are sorry to announce that The Ken Socrates Blog is currently on an indefinate haitus due to the recent mysterious disappearance of it’s author.
For more information please join Gorman Moloko and Ken’s uncle, Karl Socrates, at the Ken Socrates World News Organization as they begin:
The Search For Ken Socrates
God help us all.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
I went to a Birthday Party today. Okay, maybe not “went to” so much as “crashed”. Fucking semantics if you ask me.
I realized the stir craziness here at The Compound was finally starting to get to me when I found myself sitting atop the Tiki Bar in the south wing in nothing but a soiled pair of Green Lantern boxer shorts eating cold Beefaroni out of a can. Also, I noticed that I had apparently, at some point in the last 48 hours, carved the word “revenant” into my chest with an exacto knife.
So I figured I needed to get out.
I decided that something creative would help so I threw on a my hat and glasses and a nice windbreaker and headed directly over to the local Plaster Fun Time.
I fucking love plaster painting, man.
So I guess there was a birthday celebration being hosted over there or something. Some seven year old and a dozen or so of his pals had the place pretty well taken over and they were all whoopin’ and hollerin’ and stuff. Whatever. I’m there to work, man.
So I got myself a smock, some paints and a penguin and took a seat. I think some folks thought I might be one of the parents at first so no one really bothered me early on. I was sitting next to Jimmy “The Cunt” Bradenson, a feisty little cock knocker from, I think, Elmer Bernstein Elementary School in Dover. I gave him the nickname. I figured it fit. That kid can party, let me tell you. He was telling me he likes to sneak up and watch his parents when they “wrestle naked” and sometimes likes to crap in his backyard and not tell anyone. Cool fucker, no doubt.
I was in the middle of telling my boy about how paint huffing can be a cheap high when some doughy, near-sighted lesbian decided so sidle up and ask me why I was making my penguin “anatomically correct” and whether or not I though it was “appropriate” to be puffing on a big fattie at a children’s birthday party, no matter if I kept it under the table.
The nerve of some hermaphrodites, I’ll tell you
So, I stood up like a shot and went off. “Because I’m a fucking artist, that’s why!!!” Then I screamed to the college kid at the counter, “Yo, Weekend at Bernies! Get Rosie here off my ass, motherfucker, or I’m gonna bleed the bitch!!!”
It sort of went downhill from there. Some WWF wannabe describing himself as a “chaperone” blindsided me from the left where everyone knows my peripheral vision is shot thanks to that speedboat collision back in ‘90. So he got me down but made the mistake of knocking me into the shelves full of all the plaster casts, most of which came cascading down on us like a goddamned avalanche. I can take a hit, though, so when the dust cleared I shook off the rubble and was on my feet before the other dude knew what happened. Before he could even roll over I fucking brained him a lawn fairy.
Most of the kids and moms were scrambling for the exits at this point, which was too bad because a) the real fun was just beginning and b) they were going to miss out on some real educational shit involving human anatomy, creative use of curse words and hand to hand combat in confined spaces.
I targeted the Plaster Fun Time staff next for their inabilty to control what they should have known would be a volatile situation. If a wobbly, unshaven drunk guy in a fur hat and sunglasses with no pants on comes in and want to paint little plaster animals at 11 a.m. on a Friday, you know what? You might want to expect the worst in terms of how that situation might develop. Might want to call the manager. I’m not telling you guys how to do your jobs or anything, but when a guys sits down at the little picnic table and you can see his hairy balls hanging down beneath his smock, chances are it’s not a gonna be a good thing for anybody.
So I pelted the motherfuckers with everything I could get my hands on, unicorns, a bust of Betty Boop, a Yoda head, some little ducks, a fucking shitload of sleeping kitty cats, one or two garden gnomes. They hid behind the counter mostly but I rained down jagged plaster chunks of screaming hell on their heads for a good 45 minutes until I heard the sirens and slipped out through the storage area out back.
Wriggled through a vent shaft into the kitchen of the pizza place next door and hid out under a counter for a few hours ’til I heard all the sobbing stop and then took off for home.
Forgot my goddamned penguin, too.
Anyway. All in a day’s work.
Check it out.
Something or someone is after me. I don’t know who, I don’t know why, but I know they’re out there in the darkness, just beyond the range of my vision. Waiting.
I hear the scratchings late at night when I can’t sleep, like the sound of a trapped cat pawing at a closed door, trying to get out. When I do sleep, I awake suddenly with that certain dread that someone was just in my room, standing there watching me while I’m unconscious. There are foreign smells in The Compound, weird odors that don’t belong and I’m not just talking about that half-eaten italian sub I left under the pool table in the east wing basement.
The other night I stood naked in the rain at the edge of the woods behind the property with a flare gun and some hedge clippers from 2 a.m. until dawn waiting for something to show itself. Whatever it was stayed just out of sight at the edge of the brush. I heard breathing. I saw the glint of yellow eyes. There were even some amorphous footprints in the mud that I could not identify the next morning but no measure of screaming taunts would draw it out.
I’ve got a connection in black market military surplus who says he can get me some old Vietnamese ordinance that might still be in working order so I’m going to rig the property up right; land mines, trip wires, motion sensitive search lights, deadfalls and covered pits full of sharpened sticks.
Unfortunatley The Valkyries, my all female militia security force, have left me. When I began to suspect one of their member of being compromised and made my suspicions known, they stormed out in protest. They know as well as I do that anyone can be gotten to, though. Anyone can turn when the right situation presents itself. All people have weaknesses, even six foot tall, gun-toting, leggy blonde guerilla warriors.
Even Dave The Bodyguard is unavailable right now after breaking both his ankles in an ill-considered, ill-practiced performance with Cirque Du Soleil last week. It was all for charity, so what can I say, but dammit, Dave, you should know that 300 pound guys are just not built for the aerial cradle.
My phone calls to Darkfaulker have been met with naught but a recorded greeting from Fong Qui Fang saying, “I’m sorry but Doctor Darkfaulker is interdimensionally unavailable right now. Please leave a message or a psychic emanation and he will get back to you.”
In contrast, I’ve been reluctant to call Gonz O’Lager for help because there remains a fifty-fifty chance in my mind that he could be the one responsible for this and I don’t want to play right into his diabolical hands.
So I’m all alone.
And someone or something is hunting me. I’m trying to get ready but it’s not easy without any knowledge of my foes and, as time goes on, I start to lose my edge. Lack of sleep and an overuse of various stimulants are taking their toll on my mind and body. But I need to remain vigilant. I have no idea when the attack might come or what form it will take.
I’ll do what I can but even I have my limits. All the homemade explosives and fireplace tools in the world might not protect me if things go really pear-shaped here. Luckily, if it comes to abandoning my post, I know the woodlands around here like the back of my hairly toes and it wouldn’t be the first time I had to go John Rambo out there.
So what I’m saying is this, motherfuckers.
Bring it.
We are surrounded by idiots in this world. Brainless, pointless, useless, mouthbreathing fuckheads who, by their very existence, hamper our evolution as a species.
You know who they are. You see them everyday. They’re blocking your way in traffic, not knowing whether they’re taking a left or a right or, when they do, either too oblivious of their surroundings or just without the simple courtesy or conscience necessary to put on a goddamn blinker. They’re clogging up the supermarket aisles, standing three abreast, staring slackjawed at the Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs, completely oblivious to the line of people standing there hoping, praying to squeeze by. They’re on their cellphones constantly as they blow through stop signs and red lights or stand there annoying an entire bank queue with their drivel. There’s entire convoys of them driving scooters through Wal-Mart as we speak, bearing down on the Doritos display like a horde of glassy eyed, brain damaged wildebeasts.
And they have no idea you exist. Nor would they care if they did. Because it’s all about them, don’t you know? “Did I just cut a guy off in traffic, forcing him to take out his entire undercarriage on the median strip? Oh, well. Sorry, Heather, what were you saying about last night’s episode of Wife Swap?”
The Idiot Parade is about these people, this constant, endless procession of everyday morons who, by their astonishing lack of intelligence, morals and basic cognizance of others, make even the simplest, most basic tasks of our our lives a neverending, miserable hell.
Today’s example: A cro-magnon wannabe who, while shopping at a local supermarket, tied his feral, out of control dog to a pole outside the entrance. Not across from the entrance, or at the corner, or near the adjoining sidewalk but right outside the doors, within feet of the actual exit. So that every time anyone left the store who didn’t have that distinct odor of stale human fecal matter that he’s come to identify with his mentally defective owner, the vicious, howling mut starts a frothing monsoon of barking and snarling that would make Michael Vick proud.
Little old ladies were flinging their plums into the air with shocked terror, clawing their hair nets out and screaming. Children skinning their knees and palms as they dove to the pavement to dodge the rabid beast. I think he tore a skirt off of one woman as she went past. The entire walkway in front of the place was littered with broken eggs and crushed orange juice cartons as people abandoned their groceries in a mad scramble to get away.
So, yeah. That bastard wins Fuckface of the Week hands down.
And the parade goes on.
“Stay alive.”
Of course, he eventually killed himself.
I’ve tried to make sense of this from time to time. Of course, I understand a song lyric is just a song lyric and an anthem like that, however powerful, does not define a lifetime. It doesn’t provide some sort of magical Guitar Hero Sheild against the shit life can throw at you. Epsecially when you’re dealing with such issues as substance abuse, failed relationships, estrangement from all the friends and family you’ve come to believe no longer care whether you live or die.
When you’re that weary and alone, not even the music can reach you anymore.
Which is sad, because Stuart had so much to offer. You look not only at the official discography of The Skids and Big Country to see his song writing and guitar playing skill but to the extensive amount of material that has been released in the form of eight Rarities albums, many of which via Ian Grant’s Track Records. Some of them are better than others, of course, and the very first one contains some amazing gems like the Restless Natives soundtrack and songs like When A Drum Beats and Over The Border. On each of them, however, there is at least one example of the heart and soul that Mr. Adamson put into his work, that philosophy and, dare I say it, hope that seemed essential to his art. Belief In The Small Man, as one song title said. I always thought it was in there in some form.
So maybe that’s what baffles me, in the end. I wonder if all the positve imagery was just bullshit. Maybe I’m not looking close enough and the optimism faded away with the failure of Peace In Our Time. I look at Driving To Damascus and it becomes harder to see much faith. Your Spirit To Me, for example.
The man’s troubles have been well documented so I’ll not detail them here, once again. Suffice to say, there were times when life became rather grim and painful for him, like it does at times for all of us. Thus, I never judge a man and his final decisions, however much I wish there had been some other conclusion to the story. A different tune, another song.
I miss Stuart, I really do. It seems every time I hit shuffle on my iPod, within the first dozen or so songs there is always something from The Skids or BC to make me smile. Out of Town, the other day. The demo version of The Crossing the next. Restless Natives in it’s entirety on a long drive home just recently.
The music, at least, is still alive and that’ll have to be enough, I guess. Nothing can ever change how I feel when I hear that music, those anthems. It soars now as it ever did.
As for Stuart? Well, here’s hoping he managed to find his Eiledon at last, somewhere out there.
Here’s hoping we all do.
Things have been dark here at the Compound lately. Sometimes the months just before Spring hits are the worst up here. Melting snow makes a muddy mess of the environs when the days are warm yet there are still nights when you’d swear it was still early February. A sort of late winter depression sets in and you just don’t feel like going out very much and you find yourself hiding away, hoping things will get better.
But they don’t, really.
I’ve not been very social lately, I confess. I know, I know. You look at Ken Socrates and you see a Man of the World with associates and connections on every corner of the globe, an man as comfortable crashing a black-tie event at a local embassary as he is with a group of doomed and hopeless drunks huddled around a barrell fire behind some shady local Chinese restaurant.
Little do you realize what a solitary existence a man like myself really leads. A combination of a general anti-social nature and the necessities of a writer make for what some would consider a very lonely lifestyle. Those few genuine friends I do have all seem scattered about, miles away from each other, except for those rare occasions we find time to gather and commiserate with one another.
Thus, my current state of existence, holed up in the Bunker, doors locked, shades drawn, a ready stock of blood pollutants, music, literature and films to entertain when the quiet becomes too much for the mind to bear.
So I’ve taken to watching horror movies as a past time. Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in these days. Maybe it’s the only sensible response to a deteriorating world creeping ever onward to potential apocalypse.
One thing I’ve learned is that Americans no longer make the best horror movies. In fact, we’re not even in the running anymore. While we crank out recycled garbage like Friday The 13th or generic formula hackwork like The Uninvited, the European film industry has been producing out some amazing work, some if it profound and outright astonishing.
Take the Swedish vampire fable, Let The Right One In. Not only is it perhaps the finest blood sucker film ever made but it’s an artistic masterpiece, subtle and sublime in tone and content; emotional, shocking, touching. An absolute, utter classic.
I’ve also just watched Dead Snow, a Norweigian Nazi-Zombie gorefest that owes a bit of it’s flare to stuff like Evil Dead 2 but is just so well done and so much fun it makes you giddy with bloodlust.
If you want a more intense and disturbing experience, the French have that market utterly fucking cornered. Having seen both Inside and Martyrs in the space of one week, I can honestly say that I’m glad I have a strong stomach. These are haunting, brutal films that show humanity at it’s bloody limit, pushing the envelope of the horror genre to it’s very edges, challenging it’s audience to the extreme. For my money, Inside was the better horror fim but Martyrs will stay with you longer as you ponder the meaning behind the profoundly disturbing events portrayed within. Neither should be considered a “date movie”.
Unless it’s Squeaky Fromme you’re dating, that is.
So that’s the update from here. A long time coming, I know, but now you see why. I’ll try to keep things around here more current as time goes on and, hopefully, the mood improves.
In the meantime, you all just hang in there. We’re in this together.
