The Destroying Muse

It's been many years since I've been involved with a tempestuous beauty with a virulent temper and a wicked throwing arm, but I have always been fascinated with the archetype of the destroying muse, best known in the figure of the Leanan Sidhe of Celtic legend. Seabury Quinn's Dark Rosaleen, sharing the title of James Clarence Mangan's poem, is a good introduction to this shadowy figure, as is this song by Australian garage rock band The Screaming Tribesmen:

That Time of the Year

This is the time of the year that, to put it bluntly, kicks my ass. When the movie Thirty Days of Night came out, I joked about how it described a typical October for me, which is the busy season on the job. On a typical Saturday, I leave the house at 8AM for a volunteer gig, then hotfoot it to work, typically coming home after 1AM on Sunday. I'm not complaining, though- overwork beats no work at all.

Pure Pulpy Goodness

I picked this up at the local library's fifty-cent per pound used book sale:





It's a 1994 Barnes & Nobel anthology of stories from Weird Tales, containing more pulpy goodness than a fifty-five gallon drum of orange juice. I was able to buy it just in time for the Halloween season, when eldritch escapism is the flavor of the month.