Explore every episode of the podcast Xtinction Agenda

Red volcanic screams sought peace, blooming fire and sucking dust. To no avail. Peace instead inched its way into the world through a firm foot slid backwards into sand, through piteous burning whimpers, and through thin filaments of care.

 "My heart's pounding."

O Seymour,

Crank file keeper,

Reach through those thin missives.

O Seymour,

Green shirt avatar,

Grasp the leather-bound truth.

O Seymour,

You are

A stomach

Ready to burst.

"You have two more pages to fill before you eat, thanks to that goddammed ass-kissing accord!"

Whether on green, unbroken crests

Or across the barreled boneyard,

Love fetches and lifts.

Keep your ear close to the face of the wave,

Let its thunderous static surround you.

"Two bricks coming up."

Faced with the threat of burning, crawling, infectious hatred,

Of mothers clutching babies, popping thin skulls on cobblestone,

Of last days in the third Cybertronian war,

The second king quested and beguiled

Ripped wisdom from the heart of his son,

And in a sacrifice of souls proclaimed, "Now light our darkest hour."

"- But Prime, I'm just a soldier. I'm not worthy.

- Nor was I."

He asks you to ask questions about yourself,

All the while imagining a scalpel-sharp blade

Severing your horizontal fissure, 

Soft pink cubes soon soaked in vinegar

For ten minutes or more,

Before washed, salted and spiced, 

Cooked and finally fried,

A thin sliver of smile across his face.

"You have to convince yourself the lion is not in the room. When it is, I assure you, you will know."

The pressure of sex

Bends mirrored love

Like stone on spandex;

It shatters it

into thin sharp fragments,

And then mends it,

fitting glass madly,

Until time and choice collapse.

"Time to win some hearts and minds!"

How cool is this comic? We didn't even talk about the costume re-design. The costume re-design was literally the least interesting thing about this comic. And that's not a slight. It's a cool re-design. A cool re-design in a cool comic. For cool people. Like you.

Blue womb in barren sand, an endless supply of civilization. Soon the city will return to the nuclear wastes, born of nuclear love. All that now remains is a man.

Brain hemorrhaging

cadaverine

cephalopod

stares, unblinking.

Fearing crosshairs

of world's grim end,

it is released. 

Like grease on your beard, greed flavours the rich man's every bite. He sniffs and snorts and rummages in greed, the rich man. Crawling, he seeks just one more thing to swallow and shit. Better to burn such a creature and leave its bones for the dogs.

"Is this the one who's got you all concerned about the dirty snow? Jesus, Forrest! You and me, we bought hookers better than this for five bucks in Bangkok!"

Within the predator, prey, survivor types fallen into the trash-strewn streets, guilt blossoms, a black flower with leather petals, seeding some simulacrum of restored hope and the promise of brutal revenge.

Bro is just like us, bro. Sure he's an Avenger, and an adventurer and a ladies man, but--bro--underneath all of that, bro is actually a Zen slacker screw up. So it's okay for bro to like him. I mean, look at bro's relationship with his sidekick. That's a good dude, bro. The creators definitely aren't engaging in a high-end art rock Gen X nostalgia white wash of a shitty character, bro!

"Hey, my laserdiscs!"

Smirking mini-van mother, self-aware, symbol of a fallen world, pockets the cash. Its getting so you can't even tell who the gangbangers are anymore. School yard bullies turn out to be lost, wounded princesses, needing saving. And soldiers know sign language.

Stubborn rubber ring bearing hand strokes the veiny shaft, milking the bull, oblivious as hot cream pulses neighing into grey bucket. He is reminded of her yellow teeth. And yet he drinks.

You know how sometimes people do that thing where they come at The Odyssey or whatever from an oblique angle? Like that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern shit? What I want to know is: what if we did that with Archie in Watchmen? That rugged and loyal companion abandoned like truth in the snow. What was his story, I wonder?

Hunkered down in cathode glow, cutting grass, 

dirty hippy hunter, "Doc" Sportello, 

Ponders the mystery before him, the tarot, 

And scrawls his prayer, a steadfast arrow.

"Honey, make it quick. I got a live one tonight and I totally fucked up my face."

What to wear at the end of the world? A cloak of night beyond walls. Ancient wings and something with a name as long as your arm. Something that makes them afraid. Because better to be feared than loved. Better to find modes and orders at the sharp edge of a razor blade hurled or with bulb burst electric screams. 

"Ace the cloak."

Goaded in the hall of thunder by the horn-mad giant, the lumbering, clever tongued dude seeks audience with his other, an indignant man on a false throne. Chastised yet triumphant, the dude takes his prize. But alas, hell and all its demons now have for him a quest. 

"It's all a god damn fake, man. It's like Lenin said: you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh, you know..."

Government spooks and tunnel rat slashers. Crack strikes again. The city has gone crooked, rained out, lost. It needs something true. Straight. Something spine light, with eagle feathers fletching. Strong enough to kill.

We are all marionettes, our lives upset, dancing over desert red, a fog of memory lost, the dead giving clues through what was said to where we began and where we are led, so alchemy wed, we find ourselves, shattered golden maidenhead, returned by strings to innocence shed.

Firing side knee supporting firing side shoulder, the rounds flame outward, evaporating into the air's thin film interference, a sickly rainbow of annihilation. Her cruel heart destroys reptile plate and horn, shocking even herself, leaving yet another slumped cadaver in her wake.

Sharp edged mirror divided, a soul savaged by the hysteric rage of addicted loss, pushes and cuts as soul screams moaning, and under crown of thorns births whimpering faith, spilling forth like a vein of blood in milk.

What was once a family entertainment turned encounter with the monstrous feminine is now tamed, taped over and enclosed, shipped safely back to shore, leaving the family unit intact. No more angry mommies. No more rebellious women. Now only sleeping harmony on the couch and a child in front of the TV.

Shatter the fucking stars and bring the world to ruin. Leave it all yellow and grey, illuminated by unknown suns, soon to die. Release the dark horde, come what may, and sail the ships from nebula to rim, ready for harm. Our enemy: life. 

Objection. Whatever one might think of my client, he's never fed an animal its own siblings or whined to the principal about broken rules. And whatever he may have done to his friend, I ask the court to see what he has been and always will be: a sad sad love struck boy who created a pond reflecting his face all over the world.

Behind the locked door, a punctured neck resembles a spear wound geyser, an eye that waits to be opened. It won't be long now. We are mere moments from midnight.

The scars of the wound resembled a map, burned white-hot into flesh, a colonizing fire outlining the lost lands, where tendrils beneath the earth wait and wait and erupt into storm.

Les Misérables hollow man stare, an impotent confession, a waking nightmare. An empty shell, qlippothic grace, a pool for man to see his face. Cool, this face. Buried it will be, without a trace.

"Why don't you get a job, Al?" 

In paradise of hate, feelings shift and mutate, leaving wandering sons hurtling through space, earth shot flames dissipate, revealing child's rage, who yearns to take from noble hearts their very fate.

The fire, negative orange in the black desert night, burns its spite, a promise. Freedom from constraint, it whispers. Freedom from these people. And a paradise of hatred.

The Code must be maintained. Deploy bubbles. Feed. Angles. Steady. Power boxes. Feed. Cables. Steady. Feed. Now snow. Walk him away. Suffusion enacting. 

Wisdom, whether owl or sphinx, a shadow tomb, pulls black flesh to void. He kisses her hand and descends, silent, naked, alone. 

Demon of the air, shadow casting, slide over land, a bane to the sun. See the warm white cold flesh enter the cave, see it, truth sweating. Watch it turn yellow in this land of wolves.

"Okay, it's a fuck up, what're we going to do now?"

"I believe I was spared so I could finish the job."

To prick the human conscience itself, to make it bleed the shape of hopeless loss, and want to die but know that conscience denies, even as the gravity of nothing leaves it laughing and alone.

Savages. Kill the savages. Repress criticism. Be sad about duty. Neglect family, lost. Be your father. Do it. Do it again.

"You're everyone!" she screamed, facing the faceless ghost, saviour scapegoat, the fabricated truth which, teaching you how to impersonate yourself, teaches you how to believe.

"Who... who the hell are you?" "You'd be surprised how often i get asked that."

Void floating black boat, an abyss upon the sea or a face that seems, warbling shifting, never mixing, cooking fat screams, you have it all wrong: you are in here with me.

Listen folks, we were feeling chatty at the beginning of this episode. It happens. If you don't want to listen to three guys shoot the shit about current events, our conversation about everyone's favourite Kafka-esque dark romance, The Lobster, begins at about the 10 minute mark. Don't say we didn't warn you!

"We dance alone. That's why we only play electronic music."

Why do you believe something? Ask yourself. Ask yourself about light. Ask yourself about light asking about light. Why do you believe? What is it, that underlying certainty? Is that love?

Love, the mother of all bombs, is a mirror, looking back at the horror you might have been.

Thinking about how the red pill/blue pill metaphor was co-opted by racists and shitheads, the blame has to be laid at the feet of David Icke, doesn't it? If he wasn't the first to steal the idea, his online and in-person popularity must have opened the door for all sorts of peddlers of conspiracy ideation. From the Matrix to reptilian infiltrators to FBI crime statistics and great replacement theories. A shameful trajectory that dishonours this great film.

It's symmeTRY, goddammit! SymmeTRY!

Exit the generals, spooks, and games of chicken missile. Enter horror. The things that man does to woman. The things that power does to us all. Let the noir shine in, illuminating the dark weakness of our hero. Watch him fight against the odds, stoic red, and get revenge for us all.

https://mindlessones.com/2008/05/01/superpowers-are-real-goran-parlov/

Little disrespect to Gordon Chan in the title of this episode, I admit. Jet Li did not direct this one. But, really, no one showed up to this event for Gordon Chan. He did a good job, don't get me wrong. But this is a Jet Li movie. And what a Jet Li movie it is....

"So, it's about energy. But tell me something, does a rock have as much energy as an opponent would?" [Slices a leaf floating in air with hand]

Witness the film that PROVES that George Lucas traveled into the future in order to steal the secrets of martial arts success. He brought it back to the past and profited. With his ferocious nature, he bent the fabric of space/time, all so that Jet Li could become Luke Skywalker. From then to before and now to now. 

Hinged wooden tripod flashes, fire capturing flame, the fall, the blurred chaos of love and family and loss, a trouble-making box that, once opened, refuses to hide its promise, bodies be damned.

"Whenever there's trouble, we Chinese suffer."

Aristocrats and royalty wear armour and carry swords. They buy and sell what they need and lie about the rest. Our hero was once on track to aristocracy but gave it up in a fit of conscience and a brush with mortality. Not so our villain. Like all established royalty, he wants to sit upon a throne of fear and desire.

"You know what keeps going through my head? Where's my sandwich?"

Gender and Apocalypse. Hear me out. Laurie's mom pushed her into it, right? And Jon, that guy was pushed around by pops so badly, he didn't even have an 'h'. Both waltz around like binary stars. But neither collapses. Instead, centre lost, they hurtle outwards, yin and yang, and then back together. Up until the end.

"I--I'm scared. I feel like there's big invisible things all around me."

The gloves removed hit the floor like lead, puncturing lungs, bleeding red, untold bodies left for dead. All this, despite the concussive rounds, remained unsaid, silent infrared exploding heads. The gloves removed hit the floor. The world changed forevermore.

"Roth, don't get sentimental on me, okay?"