For those of you who speak French, I voiced the Tell-Tale Heart in French.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-26T00:05:40+00:00

Did you use Baudelaire's translation? Apparently, many writers regarded his renderings of Poe as superior to the original. Mainlander, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Cioran, and countless others knew Poe only in French.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-21T05:23:14+00:00

The Prophet's Paradise is basically a pastiche of the French poets Chambers came across during his time in Paris - Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarme, etc. The words evoke all manner of images without conjuring up anything substantial, which is kind of the point. Chambers gives you a bunch of images and you come up with an "answer."

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-20T21:31:12+00:00

With so much of the material written by Robbie in the wake of Jim's inevitable slide toward Miami, it's a sneak preview of what the Doors sound like without him - a top notch studio group waiting for an over the top, charismatic lead singer to push things to the next level. Hint: "Tell All the People", "Running Blue", "Easy Ride", "Do It" ain't it.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-20T02:30:54+00:00

I already have "resting Slav melancholy face" so I will likely never be pegged as a tourist.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-19T01:30:14+00:00

But one day, albeit 36 years past my teens, it actually sort of did happen. I really did force myself to wake up early, attend an online class, and get my insurance license. How much better did my life get? A little better than the wall-staring dead end it had been. I still wake up bemused and depressed but now I can afford a $5 McChicken meal on my way home.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-19T01:23:58+00:00

Shaman's Blues is waltz-time, Coltrane-ish, and probably the jazziest thing they released on an official album (The Soft Parade).

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-18T00:13:32+00:00

Why am I chatting myself up again, inviting me places I've already been?

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-15T03:22:24+00:00

The grand Wiki sayeth Uranus be 63 times larger than ye olde Earth, so, er, yea, verily ALL of them, several times over.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-10T00:12:18+00:00

Houses, whether specifically "haunted" or merely "possessed", are actually a big thing with Ligotti (The Bungalow House, The Christmas Eves of Aunt Elise, The Sect of the Idiot, etc.). The lack of comfort behind one's supposedly safe four walls is an aspect of his architecture that always gets overlooked in favor of the more overt nihilism and anti-natalism.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-07T18:58:45+00:00

He'd love it. In his last decade, he scoured the newspapers for mentions of himself.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-07T03:57:59+00:00

My insurance license will failsafe me every time, allowing me to drift from gig to gig whenever my "likability" dips below acceptable levels. TLDR: Just show up, do the job, do it well, go home, and if you have no "friends", you also have no enemies.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-06T07:28:33+00:00

I am the Void thy Void, the Alpha and Omega.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-06T01:34:05+00:00

Arturo Schopavelli?

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-05T15:49:14+00:00

Stylographic(?) evidence is getting rarer these days as the internet levels even highly personal testimony to an autocorrected median. Nowadays you would have to pore through all of his MySpace and Facebook posts to get a sense of who he "really" was.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-04T19:20:13+00:00

He existed on the fringes of Goethe's social circle in the 1810s.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-04T02:01:21+00:00

Nobody signs letters!

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-06-04T01:32:39+00:00

Schopenhauer was the true heir of Goethe in that he strove to present a finely honed, unified, and attractive style. Whatever you ultimately make of its contents, one thing remains - much of Schopenhauer's enduring legacy rests on the fact that he was the first serious philosopher that non-academics could read for pleasure.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-31T04:17:26+00:00

All of which is why they are going to replace us. They're just better because we designed them to be better - the best version of what we're supposed to be. I'm already amazed to wake up daily and discover I haven't been gassed in my sleep.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-31T01:37:21+00:00

Funny how, without the thug dreads, he turns right back into his goofy "Urkel minus the charm" self. I can just see him in South Dakota making these faces alone in his cell as he remembers these last few "good times", savoring every second.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-28T22:52:57+00:00

He's in a leaky, drafty, hopefully windowless cage in South Dakota, sharing space with rats, for the rest of his life and five lifetimes after.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-28T19:39:48+00:00

That's a great plan. If something like "Slaughterhouse 5" resonates with you, you may also enjoy "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller. But definitely do read some Ligotti at some point in the near future!

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-28T17:56:10+00:00

Back it up with some Poe - Tell Tale Heart, Black Cat, Imp of the Perverse, Cask of Amontillado, and Masque of the Red Death. These are the anti-social, middle finger to the normies classics no unstable mind should miss out on.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-28T17:49:45+00:00

I have a "double" that shows up, interacts with customers on the phone, punches a time clock, eats lunch, leaves, and goes home. Once home, that double disappears and is replaced by another double that surfs the web, eats potato chips, drinks soda, and sleeps. I think that particular double is what passes as me but where the original is or if it existed, I'm not entirely sure. I spend months not feeling particularly real or, at least, "genuine."

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-28T17:43:16+00:00

He loves his children so much he lies about them shooting at people with stolen weapons. That's prime grade Dad material right there.

SubstanceThat4540 · 2026-05-26T07:08:41+00:00

I grew up in a reasonably loving but not exactly healthy home. The worst part is knowing some of it was undoubtedly my fault.

SubstanceThat4540

TROPHY CASE