Blood Mountain IV: Revenge of the Blood King

The cabin has come equipped with a haunted hot tub, viz:


After some debate, we decided to sample the hot tub, thereby putting at risk the haleness of our hearts and the sanity of our very souls.

Or so we thought. It turns out it was actually pretty nice. The air was chilly and the rain was misting down everywhere around us.

Beautiful.

And then we heard it: the sound of a nearby gunshot.

Terrifying. We took a minute to make sure we were physically fine, and then, once more in command of our senses, we began to wonder: who would want to shoot at us... and miss?

There really are no good answers to that question, so we came back inside.

We're now listening to Kindhearted Woman Blues on the autumn playlist, waiting, praying for the nightmare to end...

Blood Mountain III: the Pit and the Pendulum

You may recall that last autumn the reading material of choice was The Shining by none other than the King Himself.

L and I would bring a copy everywhere we went and hold formal readings any time the future looked too hopeful or the world felt too warm and welcoming, or whenever in general we sensed the overwhelming, overarching dread begin to lift.

Our search for seasonally-appropriate reading material has led us this year to The Pit and the Pendulum by the thrice-doomed Edgar Allan Poe.

Our first complete run-through*, just now completed, took 80 creepy minutes. L narrated, accompanied by Sabitathica on the Joshua.

*Coming to you in custom fidelity stereophonic high-speed tannis-vision from Saint in Shadow Records in 2016.

Blood Mountain II

Woke early.

No new murders to report.

We've come to terms with our disappointment on this subject and we're listening now to Merriweather Post Pavilion. L is currently making french toast.

Mmm, french toast...

This place is really isolated. It’s pretty though. Here, see…



The fog from last night hasn't lifted, not entirely, and it's obscuring the view of the hills across the valley.



Being on the top of a mountain, there's no shortage of ominous woods and sinister, vindictive trees, as you can see for yourself in the photographic evidence below. And there's a path - isn't there always? - which leads, I can't help but feel, to a fearful and horrific death.

Blood Mountain I

Getting to this place was a small ordeal: the twisting mountain roads were thick with fog and the driving was slowed to a crawl. Also, it’s raining. But we've had worse drives.

The cabin is nice, though. Here’s the main room:


The master bedroom:


And here’s L’s room:


Captain Howdy once told us to “make the space your own,” so we're taking the time necessary to put things away, set things up, and move things around.

Listening to Filles de Kilimanjaro, Miles in ’68.

the horror continues...

I decided that I'm against Halloween this year, and maybe forever from now on, so I'm protesting by taking L to north Georgia for the weekend.

Since it's autumn, and autumn is about death and horror and good times, we rented a secret secluded cabin on Blood Mountain.

That's right, Blood Mountain.

Wikipedia has a lot of boring things to say about Blood Mountain. Even the parts about how it got its name are a snooze fest. But if you keep reading, you discover that there was a murder there in 2008, so maybe it's haunted.

But even if there aren't any troubled ghosts or disfigured corpses, I'm sure we'll still somehow manage to have a good time.

the horror...

'Tis the season for all sorts of fucked up godless images, like this horrific thing which ... what is it? A mummy? A straight-jacketed trauma victim maybe? Either way, we cut clear to avoid walking near him. Freak.


Or this handicapped gourd-faced creature. A total monstrosity:


And this poor guy, who we found hanging out next to the box office at the Plaza when we saw It Might Get Loud. I guess he was dying to get in...


And this, which is apparently a big-bird-o-saurus puppet, outside the Radial cafe:


And lastly, one of my favorites. I found it on the internet searching for evil clowns, which is something we can all admit to doing from time to time, right?

...right?

Anyway, words fail... yet somehow I've always suspected that this sort of gruesomeness goes on all the time:

rue Daru

Mark visited the Nunnery last night and L made us all dinner. After he left and L went to bed, I was up late, unable to sleep until 04:00.

In unrelated news, I overslept this morning. When I finally got to my office, some people were removing the HVAC unit under my window and replacing it with one that works. This is good, because the days are getting colder and Hominide Sabitathicus tends to thrive in relatively narrow environmental conditions.

Also, some piping under the Nunnery's kitchen sink has come undone and a small lakelet has formed on the kitchen floor.

In more cheerful news, L has picked up my guitars from the luthier and things are better now.

~~~~~~~

Sabitathica: sunrise, loch ness

a soundtrack of sirens

It's fucking freezing here. We're at 33° latitude and this morning the weatherman (pronounced "the internet") said it felt like 31°F. There's a frost advisory and a freeze watch.

Saw Where the Wild Things Are this morning at Phipps. I loved this movie. It's a Jungian fairytale. A beautiful, aesthetically homogeneous film, made by the same creative innocence it portrays.

forty winters

It's cold here. The weatherman says it feels like 43°.

The heat at the Nunnery has already gone out once this month. It's fixed now, but we'll see how long that lasts. You may remember that the heat went out here many times last year.

Listening to All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue by Over the Rhine, which I was just thinking Jules would have liked, or at least we could have talked about it.

Quiet night last night.  We lazed in bed and watched Pulp Fiction.

We bought two new space-heaters and some firewood at the Home Depot today.

It's cold.

fear of disorder and inexhaustible indifference

I took three of my guitars to be repaired this morning.

A tuning key broke on my Les Paul and needs to be replaced, and my Joshua (my main guitar) and my Ovation are both having trouble with their electronics.

While at the repair place I got to play a $5,000 guitar, a beautiful 1954 Gibson acoustic.  L asked me if I liked it.

Sabitathica: Yes. It's warm. It wants to play dark things.

~~~~~~~

Now reading the Importance of Being Earnest.

Autumn: in pursuit of the perfect pumpkin

~~~~~~~

On Sunday we drove to Dawsonville to hunt for pumpkins.

Hunting for pumpkins is like hunting for Easter eggs, except they don't hide them as carefully.

There were many pumpkins to choose from.

Many, many pumpkins...

... and not even fear of the supernatural was going to impede our search for the right ones.

~~~~~~~

Fact: I have lived and labored my whole life under the impression that pumpkins -- all pumpkins -- are orange in color.  Discovering otherwise has temporarily thrown my worldview into chaos.

 

Why has no one told me of this?

 

~~~~~~~

The final choice:

 

Cruising the Midi Canal 2

Part two of the previous video.

Water. Trees. Even a bridge. What more could you want?

Cruising the Midi Canal 1

An overdue posting of a video from last May. Captain Sabitathica and first mate L have set up a camera on the bow of their boat as they cruise the Midi Canal.

Coming this holiday season to a theater near you ...

Please be seated.

The Sabitathiblog Department of Propaganda and Indoctrination presents: a trailer for the upcoming feature film Funeral for a wood-elf, in dazzling 2-D robot-vision.



L: flutes
Sabitathica: guitars

Soundtrack available on Then-Yesterday Records

I'm caught in a trap but i can't back out because i love you too much, baby.

birthday...

Speaking of L's birthday, I got her a sweet pink bike (which, to quote Syd Barrett, has a basket, a bell, and rings and things to make it look good).


We had drinks at the rotating restaurant atop the Bedlam Westin...

then dinner and champagne at the famous Carroll Street Cafe:

Also there were flowers.


Stargazer lilies and lavender roses.


Good times.

Ragdoll kittens revisited

L & I recently visited our friends, the ones with the impossibly cute ragdoll kittens for part of L's birthday celebration.



 too. much. adorableness.


make it stop...



I couldn't help but think there's something wrong with so much cuteness all in one place.  It makes me suspicious.



What are they up to?



What are they planning?



I have a bad feeling about this.

Welcome to the dream machine

New music from Sabitathica & L; This is a dream-pop version of Welcome to the Machine by the Pink Floyd.

~~~~~~~

Sabitathica: welcome to the dream machine

L: voice
Sabitathica: dream guitars and ping-pong bass

Jinx

I've been playing jinx recently, the game where you can make someone stop talking if you say the same thing at the same time. The way we played it growing up, if you talked while in jinx you had to buy the other person a coke. For every word spoken.

But I soon found I wasn't jinxing people as often as I wanted to, so I changed the rules with some people, mostly with L. It's a lot more fun this way.  I now jinx her whenever we even share the same thought. Like,

Sabitathica: Why are zebras striped? It's for camouflage, right? But don't they live on the savanna? What could they be trying to blend in with? Each other? That doesn't seem like it would work.
L: Oh my god, that's so weird. I was just thinking the exact same thing!
Sabitathica: jinx.

Or, in the car, both singing to a song:

Sabitathica & L: "Hey hey mama said the way you move..."
Sabitathica: jinx.

Under the new rules, I could jinx you right now for reading this and following my train of thought, but I won't.  I don't even drink coke.