Freelance writer specializing in comedy and the geekier end of the pop culture spectrum.
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Lord Byron’s Luggage
I've had a song on heavy rotation in my head today. It's an up-tempo ditty called Lord Byron's Luggage by the criminally-underrated (and sadly no longer with us) American singer-songwriter Warren Zevon: As a lyricist, Zevon was up there with the best of them. Dylan, Waits, Costello and Cohen - that's the kind of league he played in. That being said, I never really gave much thought as to what Lord Byron's Luggage was all about until today. Here's the first verse: Lord Byron had a lot of luggage He took it when he travelled far and wide He didn't [...]
2012
From The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna: 'What is happening to our world is ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead called "concrescence", a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together. The "autopoetic lapsis", the alchemical stone at the end of time, coalesces when everything flows together. When the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection. I come very close here to classic millenarian and apocalyptic thought in my view of [...]
“Boss” Tin
The second issue of Dirty Bristow magazine features a piece I wrote entitled Lennon’s Guide to the Mythical Fauna of the English Midlands. It’s my attempt at presenting an overview of those Birmingham-based mythological beasts that have so often been ignored by local historians, cryptozoologists and the presenters of Midlands Today.
Tales from the Crypt
Sometimes I like to draw things. Not often, just sometimes. Recently I was asked to provide an illustration for The John School, a marvellous short story by my old pal Dan Powell that appears in the second issue of Dirty Bristow magazine. The John School is a morality tale set in kerb crawler rehabilitation unit and - without giving too much away - it's powerful stuff and not for the faint hearted. My illustration for the story tried to evoke the style of a 1950s EC horror comic: in a dimly-lit classroom, a frightened man turns to us and screams; [...]
