Primordial Sap Pit: Resinous Goo

Primordial Sap Pit of Quercus alba

‘Só de te ver...’ — Iteração Dois

La Récurrence des Visions Chimériques

‘Só de te ver...’

Relo Totems of Stratum V-VI

Deso Safeguards Furley Trippers from Backwoods Witchery

Stoddard walked into the foundry loft one Stratum XIV Saturday night and found the XCS station crew in an active state of psilocybic mirth.
  “Gleebie simia kranio,” Noach whooped as he loped around in circles. Stoddard tried to make sense of the non sequitur as the room erupted in laughter. ‘Punk’ Mike was there along with Glen Aludo, Brojoe, and Miss Warchalder.
  “Ferĉevalo! Ferĉevalo!” someone began chanting and all joined in.
  “You have wheels, Ian,” a loud Glen barked at Stoddard. “Let’s do it!”
  And so the gang hopped in the Citation and took the Verdurbo road south through the night.
  Around midnight, the car pulled off the road to a quiet pasture in the middle of nowhere. The boisterous group leapt through the cornstalk rows hooting like animals as Stoddard stood eyeing the silhouette of the colossus against the moonless starry sky.
  Noach and Mike clambered atop the sculpture as the rest of the plastered posse cavorted around in a paganish frenzy.
  ‘Might be fun if I was in their state of mind’ Stoddard thought but otherwise stared silently in wry amusement.
  “Let’s get outta here,” someone muttered once the adrenaline wore off. And with that they piled back into the car and were off into the night.
  The crew wandered the dark country roads aimlessly until someone piped up, “I think there’s an old covered bridge down that way — take a right.” The Citation tooled down the forested lane until its headlamps lit up the yawning entrance of an old timber-truss bridge. They passed through it.
  “Kinda creepy,” Miss Warchalder said looking over her shoulder. They continued on until the road narrowed and the paving ended in a two-track dirt trail. The vehicle pulled to a stop.
  “Look! Can you see that light?” someone in the back seat pointed. Through the pitch black a faint amber glow stood at some distance behind the trees.
  “Does someone live back there?” Noach asked.
  “This is even more creepy,” Warchalder whispered. “Let’s split.”
  There was no place for a U-turn so Stoddard had to manoeuvre the Citation with a five-point turn without toppling off the shoulderless road. The chemically altered state of the passengers fueled a near-panic: “Let’s go!”
  “Alright, alright, I got it,” reassured Stoddard as they made their way out of the woods and across the farmland back towards town.

A few days later Glen approached Stoddard at the XCS station.
  “Hey, remember the creepy lights in the woods we saw?”
  “Yeah, so?”
  “Elmore from Pod 7C says occult activities go on out there around some millhouse or something.”
  “Really?” Stoddard raised his brow sceptically.
  “He’s in the theological programme. He wouldn’t be taking the piss over something like this.”
  Stoddard silently weighed the claim.
  “Good thing you had a sober babysitter then, right?”

Menko 23: Ikatteiru Yappī

Medika Monaro: The Bittersweet Dadirri

From the antipodes comes the gift of guwiira — scarlet blooms with baby’s breath, a treasured felicitation to be sure. Posterity has the conferral committed to a planar preservation — a technical tome to hold the token bound, this poignant souvenir of Optigrids-era captivations from afar.
  Micro-aeons and macro-seconds elapse along with fading fervency, leaving to question the verity of a heart’s own fleeting eye.
  Passing time again finds the pages spread and that floral fairing extruding back into its axonometric constitution. And the heart’s self-doubt scales out every petal to a diffident topography of barren high plains ruddy with furrows of drear.
  Will every future affection garner the same qualms, no matter how compelling the pathos pleads in that very moment?

Cultural Autosarcophagy: The Erysichthonic Last Supper

The transition from Culture Vulture to Cultural Cannibal is nothing new with scene-level dilettantes running out of others’ material to recycle.
  But today the very torchbearers who have safeguarded decades worth of globally beloved creative works are vivisecting their own canon to feast upon their own viscera.
  A desperate move by the creatively impotent to reprocess legacy content, for sure. We know Kultural Kuru is a slow creative death for individual try-hards. But the Cultural Autosarcophagy that currently looms on a macro level happens to destroy both the content itself and the eater of his own content faster than a studio head can shriek ‘reboot.’ Not to mention, it doesn’t look so pretty to the public witnessing the Entertainment-Industrial Complex self-gorging without a lick of shame.
  Again, a lifeless carapace is the result — ironic, in the sense that to these callow cultureclasts, the importance of the façade has always outweighed any innate aesthetic essence.

SIDEBAR: From afar this may look like another example of Gaijin Contagion, or more accurately, Báizuǒ Bìng Sickness. Another irony — the genesis of Mao-Think itself comes from the Middle Kingdom, so the seeds of cultural rot planted in the West indeed come from without. Yet the cultural brahmins over here are the knowing knaves of the Long March playing their fools to incessantly bleat their performative concerns.
  Ultimately, this conflict (like most) boils down to “divide et impera” strategies, wherein the Powers That Be watch from on high as socio-political and economic entropy engulfs a world that only the Powers themselves can “rescue.” But this meta-scope view is a rabbit hole one could burrow into quite endlessly.

  Anyway, critics may say the onset of Cultural Autosarcophagy is just the endgame where the demand for Nostalgioid Opiates overrides the Thumotic Assertive. “Updating a Classic,” the proud tastemakers sniff oxymoronically. In truth, it’s just Burge’s Axiom turned on itself — the champion waving the knife is the one in the mirror, mirror on the wall.

Xarnaq Ups Recruitment Efforts over Jurgætium Sabre-Rattling

The Xarnaq Praetorium has been forced to escalate military recruitment efforts recently after Imperial Jurgætium sharply increased military exercises close to Xarnaq space.
  Jurgætium has sharply increased military manoeuvres close to the Praetorium’s borders this month, with Xarnaq brass forced to mount defensive efforts. Officials of the Praetorium and United Planets say it is the worst escalation of military activity in more than a decade.
  The military pressure on the Xarnaq Praetorium is rising alongside Jurgætium’s growing tensions with the United Planets. Infinata of Dementia V has strengthened his support for the Praetorium with largesse for Xarnaq officials and praise for their arms purchases — a move UP officials say is sowing seeds of paranoia among Xarnaq’s upper echelons.
  “It’s important for us to recognise that this is really for real,” said Magister DeVault, Ambassador of Imperial Jurgætium. “And in time, as Xarnaq amps up the crazy, Jurgætium will keep a close eye on the situation.”
  Many military experts argue Jurgætium’s moves are an attempt to shake the Praetorium’s morale and signal displeasure about closer contacts between them and Dementia V power brokers.

Froggie Power Totem Empowers Natatory Postulants

In times of high spirits, Froggie — the grand totem of Lac des Cloches — is often manifested in mortal form. Some in the guise of velour bodysuits, others conferred upon with eke-names both honourary and unofficial. Even certain corporate entities have been inspired to market their athletic powders with the Froggie likeness, an issue not without disceptators making hay.
  Furley aspirants channel the pneuma on both terraferma and la vita nell’acqua, as the motif grants means both valent and volent... come i nostri piedi trovano la sabbia fino al mare...