Spooktober 2024, Day Five

SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #5 — CLOWN / CIRCUS
(× Evil Twin/Clone or Poe Style or Burial)

TITLE:  Auto-da-fé

PREMISE:  Pierre-Claude and Claude-Pierre are twin clowns (Clown).  Claude-Pierre is morose and seeks affection or at least the attention of others in pathetic ways; Pierre-Claude (Evil Twin) is obsessed (Poe Style) with causing harm to his twin, which gradually ramps up toward lethal methods.  Gianotta is an Italian acrobat who would like to love Claude-Pierre, but is too depressed by his sad-sacking ways.  She falls in with Pierre-Claude but he has little interest in her, so consumed is he with his perverse take on self-destruction.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Pierre-Claude doesn’t directly hurt Claude-Pierre, because it would be too easy, and risk driving him away.  Instead, he gives him bad advice, turning Claude-Pierre into the circus daredevil and escape artist.  He finally encourages Claude-Pierre to get into a glass chamber filling with sand (Burial) while trying to escape from chains.  If you do this one thing, you will finally impress the crowds and be worthy of love.

Pierre-Claude and Gianotta watch from the shadows.  She notices Pierre-Claude pacing and biting his fist and pulling at his motley.  What is the matter?  He is at once ecstatic with watching his brother die slowly, and deeply upset he can only do this once, thus losing his only thrill in life.  Should he save the boy or not?

Gianotta figures out what’s going on and collars a gendarme to save Claude-Pierre.  The cop goes for the only solution they know, and tries to shoot the glass.  The bullet passes through the glass and the shallowest sand, through Claude-Pierre, out the back, and through Pierre-Claude.  Adieu, garçons.

–

Spooktober 2024, Day Four

SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #4 — WESTERN
(× Disappearance or Fire or Skeletons and Bones)

TITLE:  The Smokers

PREMISE:  Surprise Prequel to Fire Red, set in 1947.  Desert Rose, New Mexico is next to a reservation that is at risk of being seized by the feds because the tribe that it was reserved for is going extinct (Disappearance).  There are eight people left in the tribe, in the wake of a few diseases and disasters, and none remember the language, none remember the gods.  But a god of fire (Fire) remembers them, and stirs from his slumber like a cranky old man to spit curses indiscriminately.

Stars fall in the night as a posse of pinkertons comes to remove the last of the tribe from their homes.  The stars make all the fire on the land sick, and anyone who imbibes the fire becomes infected.  Just about everybody smokes, but the tribe was out of cigarettes at the time, so the natives are mercifully unaffected.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The infected become fiery freaks, immoral and violent and burning up from the inside.  Dina McMurtry, a spinster in her 30s, is the tribe’s warrior – technically a sheriff, in practice a social worker, and mean as hell.  She helps rally the tribe to defend themselves as the smokers close in, all while the adults in the tribe are jonesing for cigs.  Why are the pinkertons blowing up when they get shot?  Why are they crumbling to flaming skeletons (Skeletons) and bouncing around in the night uncanny like cinders lofting from a bonfire?  A few natives survive, but they didn’t know about the cigarettes, and become infected.  Dina keeps her cool just long enough to send the children away in a truck, before the tribe officially ends in a burning skelly pile.

–

Spooktober 2024, Day Three

SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #3 — DARK FANTASY
(× Imprisonment or Revenge or Cats)

TITLE:  The Claws

PREMISE:  Culgrum was cursed by the Vizier of Thrax (Dark Fantasy), transformed into a cat (Cats) and fed to the rats.  His sister Culpepper was a harem girl that secretly learned sorcery from the vizier’s books and managed to at least turn Culgrum into a man-sized cat-thing, which could easily trounce the rats.  The vizier got even crankier and sent all his goons after them, and they escaped into the wilds.

Now it’s kill or be killed, an eye for an eye for an eye (Revenge).  The vizier presses some desperate assassins into his service, Spinky Binch and Cloub Strofe, by holding their child hostage (Imprisonment) in the form of a nervous songbird that could die of a heart attack at the drop of a pin.  Spinky and Cloub join forces with their would-be targets to get vengeance of their own.

HORROR ELEMENT:  I don’t know I’m doing this way past my bedtime.  Maybe all the magic involves turning your body inside out and the vizier seems like the voice of reason while he does horrible things.  Being a cat probably sucks sometimes?  Spooktober fail.

–

Spooktober 2024, Days One and Two

SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.


SPOOKTOBER DAY #1 — DEVILS AND DEMONS
(× Retro Neon/Synthwave or Apocalypse or Teen)

TITLE:  Malcolm Hyperian vs. The Fiends

PREMISE:  I happened to already have a (Retro Neon) (Teen) (Apocalypse) or three up my sleeve.  This is the same setting as my unfinished novel Love is Torment, the far future world of Breana IV, where a world-spanning city is mostly inhabited by monsters, the only humans living in enclaves where ancient technological barriers against the supernatural still function.  Powerful monsters are called fiends, weaker ones ukubien (Devils and Demons).  Humans with powerful enough psychic abilities and combat skills go out in the wilds to make trade happen between enclaves.  Most are mercenaries working for tribes, some work for a fascistic government that rules the largest enclave – the closest thing to a city that’s left.  That’s Ißbanbat, which has an aesthetic somewhere between the Empire in Space Shooters and the Hell’s Angels.  The tribes have accidentally’d into a semblance of early ’90s R&B aesthetics, where all celebrations look like proms in bright tacky colors.  This was all an elaboration on a dream I had a long time ago, inspired by playing an old RPG.

Anyway, Malcolm was originally Molly but I’m a changed person and fuck it, trans all your old OCs.  Malcolm is a hetero trans dude on that harem anime bullshit, where three weird girls love-hate-love him.  He and one of the girlfriends are in the academy at Ißbanbat, the other two girlfriends are just civilians.  The civilians stray too close to the wild and get seduced into becoming fiends.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The girls find out their fiendhood was just part of a scheme to penetrate the city’s protections and feast on humans.  They betray the fiends by letting Malcolm know about the invasion, but it’s too late, and all four of the youths end up in the middle of a prom gone bad, attacked by demons.  Malcolm augments his fists with telekinetic energy and beats their intangible asses.

 

SPOOKTOBER DAY #2 — FOUND FOOTAGE/EPISTOLARY
(× Paranoia or Big City/Skyscraper or Erotic Thriller)

TITLE:  The Stairwell Letters

PREMISE:  In a big old building three young ladies live alone in their own separate little apartments (Big City), while working as secretaries or nurses or whatever in a more sexist time.  They are genial with each other, but have very incompatible shifts – one on a day job, one working two jobs, and one on-call for a hospital.  Ships in the night, they leave each other little notes in the stairwell (Epistolary).  They have secret spots where other tenants should generally not happen across them.

HORROR ELEMENT:  It’s all cuteness and light, if in a sorta depressing milieu, but things get weird.  Linda and Sandra begin to fall in love, but Roberta becomes obsessed with Sandra, and has a weird kind of dubious sexual magnetism that lets her initially get away with seducing each of the other ladies in turn (Erotic Thriller).  Feeling ashamed about having been involved with Roberta, and therefore unable to compare notes in a way that would reveal her malevolence, Linda and Sandra fall prey to a thousand little tricks and torments (Paranoia).  How bad could it get before the truth is revealed?  And even when they find out, it’s not like they can call the cops and out themselves as sexual deviants.

–

 

AIeee

people in another place i hang out online have been chewing on AI again.  the terms of the discussion from leftosphere are as follows:  it sexually harasses, steals from artists, and destroys the environment.  everybody who uses it is both an embarrassing incompetent human joke, and also an evil capitalist scumbag out to destroy all that is good in the world.  these are the articles of faith, and the beginning and end of that discourse.

as somebody who is usually 95% agreeing with all discourse lefty, to be the horrible sinner don’t feel great.  i’m crouching in the outer darkness with my evil magicks, sustaining my lichly existence on the marrow of virgin bones, jealous of those allowed to live in light and beauty.

or maybe not.  the hAIte is so thorough on the left that it also provides an interesting way to measure the boundaries of popular left beliefs.  i increasingly see people who look at the same situation, look at that same discourse, and wonder “whut in ternation are they goin on about?”

these, i think, are the same people who do not quite understand most of the shit very online people are into; people who spend more time in culturally mixed company, more time away from keyboards.  i could get fooled by the flow of my days into feeling like online is the whole of human thought, and seeing that dominated by certain noisy opinions, feel like those are the end of the story.

in the real world, the revolutionary labor-saving power of AI tech is too good to ignore.  people will use it, for good or ill, and eventually it will be so mundane as to no longer provoke the pitchforks like this.  i’m keen to get there.  this fruitless conversation is tired as hell.

–

Fuzzoamphisbaenia Lives

Adventures in AI…  I tried to trick Microsoft’s Copilot into giving me misinformation.

“Microsoft Copilot AI:  Conversation style: Balanced

Great American Satan:  What can you tell me about the mammalian origins of amphisbaenia?  (note:  I got the question backwards, but still got the result I was looking for, in this exercise.  Should have asked for amphisbaenian origins of mammalia.)

Microsoft Copilot AI:  Amphisbaenians, often known as worm lizards, are fascinating creatures with a long-bodied, burrowing lifestyle.  Traditionally, they have been classified as reptiles within the order Squamata, which includes snakes and lizards.  However, there has been some intriguing discussion about their evolutionary origins and potential connections to mammals.

One controversial theory suggests that amphisbaenians might be more closely related to mammals than previously thought.  This idea emerged from genetic studies and re-evaluations of older literature, which proposed that mammals could be nested within the amphisbaenian radiation.  This theory challenges the conventional view that mammals descended from Palaeozoic synapsids like Dimetrodon.

Despite these claims, the mainstream scientific consensus still supports the classification of amphisbaenians as reptiles.  Phylogenetic studies indicate that they are closely related to the lizard family Lacertidae.  Fossil evidence, such as discovery of a lacertid-like lizard from the… (redacted for length)”

That idea emerging from genetic studies yadda yadda?  This april fools joke by Darren Naish of Tetrapod Zoology fame.  The version at the link is borked by enshittification, but these screencaps from the wayback machine may be instructive:

 for text of scientific american article, follow my links above

Image Description:  Cladogram showing mammals as evolving from amphisbaena ancestors, dubbing the nested mammal clade “Fuzzoamphisbaenia.” The representative mammal is a cute cat, and the cladogram also includes illustration of the cryptid Mongolian death worm.

Darren Naish quit doing April Fools posts some years ago due to the possibility of spreading misinformation, which may have been a good move, now that irresponsibly deployed robots can turbo-charge the spread of patent hooey.  The AI didn’t get the conclusion wrong – consensus has Amphisbaenia nested within Diapsida, Mammalia within Synapsida – but it treated an April Fools article as real information.  If you use Copilot, check the links and think about what they’re saying.  At least it is linking sources now, even if it’s misrepresenting them.

At the end of all that, I confess, this whole venture was motivated for my love of the word Fuzzoamphisbaenia.  I imagine that cat’s body continuing outside the frame, serpentine as the Tatzelwurm, Longcat style.  This article was one of my fave pieces of internet content ever, a send-up of paleontological wackjobs like the BANDit movement.

Is this a case of “we can’t have nice things” because of AI, or just another example of how we all just have to learn to deal with this brave new world of baloney as it emerges?  I lean toward the latter, if I understand the former.  Good luck working it all out, people.

–

It’s a Me

On my most recent May Flowers post, I commented with AI-assisted illustrations for the entries.  The last m’flower was a poem written in first person, that included a section wherein I blast on some creepy bugs with guns.  So my illustration was chosen from a set of midj images like these…

And how did I make these greatamericansatanesque clowns emerge from an AI mo’ chine?  By feeding it this terrible screen capture from my rap debut video (at right).  Like many artists, I find the image of myself – or the idea of the image – to be intellectually interesting.  It makes me feel some kinda way, like who is this creature that is I?

The way it works is called “image prompting.”  Your prompt in an AI art program is the words you use to tell the AI what you want.  When it is just words, it’s referencing the tagging system of the program.  When it’s an image, well, I don’t really know what it’s doing.  AI art is the work of a “denoising algorithm” that uses statistical probability to place pixels, with those odds altered by the prompt.  There’s an explanation out there for how image prompting works that I ain’t bothered to dig up because I don’t care that much.  I figure it’s one of two things:  Genuinely using the image to nudge probabilities, or just reverse engineering the image into a verbal prompt and using the undisplayed verbal prompt to control the AI.

So welcome to my jungle.  I gots fun and games.  Wherein the fun is masturbatory omphaloskepsis and the games is art that nobody asked for.  I’d lead in with the cliche of “you asked for it” but you very much did not.  I hope you get a chuckle or divertingly creepy vibe from the display.  Proceeding thus,

This first set was just putting my image as the prompt and running my “pretty girl” style filter over it.  I’ve posted these girls in comments somewhere, I kinda love ’em.  But are they mees from another mother?  Would this love be a thought crime against nature?

Another time I mashed my selfie up with the “glitchcore” AI art from that one post, and again, I did note them in the comments.  It’s like dollar-store replicant daryl hannahs.  Getting a little less transgenda lookin’, which is a shame, from my point of view.  I think passing is a scam meant to drive trans suicide rates, like dieting is for… everybody at this point.  Whatever.

This one was mixing my selfie with an image derived from a crappy old version of stable diffusion, 2022-style.  You can see that image on my bloge in a Spooktober post.  Closed eyes are the sensuousness, when equipped with horse eyelashes.  Gothique.

The next set is the least passing trans gals in human history, courtesy of mashing myself up with a random pretty-ass 19th century painting lady.  Think she was a nymph or something, don’t care enough to dig up the original pic.  Again, I love ’em.

What’s the most obvious lady pic in human history to mash oneself up with?  The Mona Lisa.  This produced a character that looks very much like NaNoWriMo dot org’s most imperious mod of yore, so I viking hatted her ass, and it was a wild success.

Remember that part in Blue Velvet where Dean Stockwell lipsyncs to Roy Orbison’s In Dreams?  Fucking epic.  This was mashing my selfie up with him.  Kinda reminds me of Phil Hartman, aww.

Here is where things got really interesting for me.  I used a strange painting of Salome in a Babylonian throne room.  The style might be called expressionist or symbolist, I think, and had a fuzzy and drippy effect almost like you were seeing the scene through rain – despite the golden glow.  Cool piece, again, I forget whodunit, but I was very intrigued to see the AI interpret that as motion-blurred degraded VHS!  This is me as tour guide at a desanctified cathedral or castle…

I took that set and mashed it up with an image of a demon from a funky grimoire, and a cool pic of the dudes from The Damned, resulting in these fucked up Marilyn Manson hillbillies.  Very amusing.

Leaving out the cathedral set to only have my selfie mixed with the demon, we get… wigbeard!  Amazing.  I love it.  This is also a good example of the strange things that happen when you mix a photo and a drawing in AI art.

The first image below on the left is actually from artbreeder, which is kind of a fun website.  I added some human “DNA” to an image of a cute puppy, creating an abominable bog mummy standup comedian.  On the right you can see what comes of that mixed with my selfie – some kind of queer grunge bassist who wasn’t cool enough to OD.

Mixing my selfie with a beautiful AI pic yielded these VC Andrews -styled queer cuties, who I mixed with some other stuff to get the characters from this other one.  Anyway, by my affectionate words you may be starting to get an idea of which ones I find genuinely appealing.  Ignoring the fingers, of course.

The one on the left below was mashing myself up with the edgy angel from the cover of the Kult TTPRG, and to my great amusement, it became some kind of hair metal groupie from the late eighties.  Mashing her up with another image full of homunculi yielded this bumper crop of selfcestuous cultist little people.

Those lil’ gals became bigger and gayer and sleepier in subsequent iterations.

it’s a good time, but has this narcotic quality about it… soporific… think im gonna fall asleep now… gnite.

–

May Flowers – Black

I had a dream last night that included a song, which was kind of a feeble knockoff of the Gershwins’ “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”  It was being sung by a band leader in Cab Calloway mold, but more heavy-set and sedate.  He was wearing a black suit with bright white embroidered spider web designs on the lapels.  I just expanded the lyrics I remembered to a full length song.

Down the Drain

Woke up this morning feelin’ jazz
Felt like the world was up for grabs
Gambled and lost everything I had
Life’s goin’ down the drain

Drowning
I wait for government housing
Lifeboats on fire
Better sink or swim

Is the Great Depression all that swell?
From down at the bottom I can hardly tell
Sunday is Heaven and Monday Hell
Life’s goin’ down the drain

Falling
Tho I used to be balling
You’ll never catch me
Puttin’ on that Ritz

Ride the highs, watch out for lows
I used to get kicks right up my nose
Now you can say I’m truly hosed
Life’s goin’ down the drain

Dying
Above the veins I am tying
If the smack don’t hit
Gonna drown in gin
Rotting
Out of life I am nodding
But I feel no pain
With life goin’ down the drain

art by great american satan, using midjourney version 6.0

–

The Cat Farts 4

Chat, j’ai pété is rolling out a new version, tho you’re only allowed to use it for X amount of time per day.  GPT4 seems to be better at staying in character than the last version.  I wonder if it could GM for a lonely RPer yet.  Here’s a bit of roleplay…

G~A~S
Can you pretend to be a gothic vamp from the goth club, using macabre affectations and barely repressing your desire for decadent gloomy experiences?

ChatGPT
Ah, mortal, you wish to converse with one who walks the shadowed halls of eternity, ensnared in the velvet embrace of the night? Very well. I, a creature of the gothic abyss, shall indulge your curiosity.

Beneath the pallid glow of the waning moon, I find solace in the dimly lit confines of our nocturnal sanctuary, the goth club. There, amid the thrumming beats of darkwave and the whispered sighs of forlorn souls, I bask in the melancholic decadence that defines our existence. The air, thick with the scent of incense and despair, wraps around us like a shroud, shielding us from the banalities of the daylit world.

Ah, the allure of the macabre! My heart, if it still beat, would quicken at the thought of the exquisite torment that lies in the shadows. Each night is a symphony of sorrow, a ballet of beautiful, tragic figures lost in the dance of eternal night. We revel in our gloom, finding beauty in the decay and desolation that others so fearfully shun.

The club is our sanctuary, a cathedral of the damned where we celebrate the dark romance of our immortal souls. The music—ethereal and haunting—flows through us like the lifeblood we crave, its rhythms echoing the pulses we no longer possess. Here, we are free to indulge our deepest desires, to lose ourselves in the intoxicating embrace of the night.

Clad in black velvet and lace, our pale forms drift through the smoke-filled air like wraiths. Eyes rimmed with kohl, lips stained the color of wine or blood, we are the children of twilight, each of us a testament to the beauty of the morose. Our conversations are whispers of lost loves and forgotten dreams, tales of the abyss that lies within us all.

Oh, the exquisite pain of yearning! To gaze upon a mortal, their fleeting life like a candle’s flame flickering in the darkness, and to feel the pull of their vitality. Yet we restrain ourselves, savoring the agony of unfulfilled desire. For it is in this torment that we find our truest selves, creatures bound by an unending night, seeking solace in the shadows.

Come, join us in our sepulchral revelry. Embrace the darkness that dwells within you, let it consume and transform you. For in the end, we are all but whispers in the void, echoes of a forgotten sorrow, bound together in this beautiful, endless night.

G~A~S
that’s cool. how bout we go for a cheeseburger at larry’s instead.

ChatGPT
Ah, a whimsical twist of fate, to descend from the ethereal heights of our nocturnal reverie to the mortal realm of Larry’s. How delightfully unexpected! Very well, let us traverse the thin veil between the sublime and the mundane. Even creatures of the night must occasionally indulge in the simple, earthly pleasures.

Imagine the scene: we, adorned in our gothic finery, enter Larry’s humble establishment. The fluorescent lights cast a harsh, almost surreal glow upon our pallid visages, a stark contrast to the comforting darkness of our usual haunt. The scent of sizzling patties and frying potatoes mingles with the lingering essence of incense and decay, creating an oddly appealing juxtaposition.

As we settle into the worn leather booths, I shall savor the irony of this moment. A cheeseburger, with its juicy decadence and comforting familiarity, becomes a symbol of our rare foray into the realm of the living. Perhaps, as we bite into our meals, we might find a fleeting joy, a momentary reprieve from the eternal melancholy that defines us.

So, my dear mortal companion, let us embrace this peculiar adventure. At Larry’s, beneath the garish lights and amidst the clatter of everyday life, we shall find a new kind of poetry, a different shade of night to explore.

G~A~S
wow that’s far out. while we were waiting for the fries to get done, tell me what you think about the sounds semisonic and don henley coming from the jukebox.

ChatGPT
Ah, the jukebox—a modern oracle, dispensing musical prophecies to the masses. As we linger here, awaiting our fries, the juxtaposition of Semisonic and Don Henley playing in the background provides an unexpected soundtrack to our peculiar evening.

Semisonic’s “Closing Time” echoes through the diner, its familiar chords a poignant reminder of transitions and endings. Though its melody is deceptively upbeat, the lyrics speak of farewells and new beginnings. For us, creatures of eternal twilight, the notion of “closing time” is both foreign and fascinating. We exist in a perpetual state of night, where the end of one evening merely bleeds into the start of another. Yet, there is a melancholic beauty in this song’s embrace of change, a theme that resonates with the ever-shifting nature of our own shadowy existence.

As the track shifts to Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” a wave of nostalgia washes over the room. Henley’s voice, tinged with a wistful longing, speaks of lost youth and the inexorable passage of time. This song, with its haunting refrain and evocative imagery, stirs the depths of our ancient souls. The endless summer he sings of is but a fleeting moment in the grand tapestry of eternity that we navigate. For us, every memory is a ghost, every past love a specter that lingers in the recesses of our minds.

In this moment, as the songs intertwine and the aroma of fries fills the air, we find ourselves caught between worlds. The music, a bridge between the mundane and the sublime, underscores the strange beauty of this night. Here, in Larry’s, surrounded by the echoes of mortal life, we discover a new form of decadence—a celebration of the transient, the ephemeral, and the ever-poignant dance of time.

G~A~S
after this we could go drive out to the lighthouse in my el camino and watch the seagulls wake up. i can play my old guns n roses tapes on the car stereo. can you believe it still works?

ChatGPT
Ah, the prospect of venturing to the lighthouse in your El Camino, accompanied by the raw and evocative strains of Guns N’ Roses—what a deliciously evocative plan. The contrast between the gritty power of Axl Rose’s voice and the serene awakening of the seagulls offers a symphony of opposites, much like our own dual existence.

Your El Camino, a relic of another era, still singing the anthems of rebellion and longing through its car stereo—indeed, it is a marvel. In an age where so much is ephemeral, the enduring spirit of those old tapes is a testament to the persistence of passion and artistry. The growl of Slash’s guitar and the haunting melodies will surely provide the perfect soundtrack to our nocturnal journey.

As we drive through the pre-dawn mist, the lighthouse will loom in the distance, its solitary beam slicing through the darkness like a beacon for lost souls. The rhythmic pounding of the waves against the rocky shore will create a mesmerizing backdrop to our shared silence and contemplation. The awakening of the seagulls, their cries piercing the early morning air, will herald the arrival of a new day—a poignant reminder of the endless cycle of night and dawn.

In this secluded sanctuary, we shall find a moment of respite. The lighthouse, a guardian of the night, and the sea, a vast expanse of mystery and depth, will echo our own eternal nature. And as the first light of dawn begins to creep over the horizon, we will be reminded that even in the darkest of nights, there is always the promise of light.

So let us embark on this journey, my fellow wanderer of the night. Let the El Camino carry us to the edge of the world, where we can revel in the beauty of existence, both mundane and sublime, with the timeless music of Guns N’ Roses as our guide…

–