Thursday, May 7, 2020

Horror Anthology

I know I've been joking about the relevance of horror fiction in this current Age of Plague, but, Lordy Loo, events this week are really reminiscent of a horror anthology. Two months ago, I wrote a post titled The Masque of the Orange Death, riffing off of Poe's masterpiece, and now it looks like the Orange Death has entered Stupid Prince Prospero's castle.

A week ago, I referenced Robert Chamber's The King in Yellow in a post, and now we have the tale of the King in Orange unmasking:



The gaslighting attempt is farcical, and it really comes across as a scene from the eponymous play in Chambers' story cycle:


Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda) No mask? No mask!



Meanwhile, the real horror story continues, and the Orange Death is poised to sweep rural America at a time when the MAGA people are agitating for opening up for business. Meanwhile, Trump is claiming to be a warrior in the fight against COVID-19. and I'm getting a real Staff Sergeant Matthew McKeon vibe from him.

NOTE: My familiarity with the Ribbon Creek Incident is due to family history... one of my mother's cousins was there, and being raised on Pelham Bay in the Bronx, was a strong swimmer who was able to save several other recruits from drowning. This was why she drilled into us the importance of learning how to swim at a very young age.

2 comments:

  1. Never heard of the RIbbon Creek incident - why am I surprised that McKeon got away with what amounts to a slap on the wrist for killing six young men? :(

    In addition to doing nothing, and then worse than nothing, to stop 77,000 Americans dying or that number rising, Mango Mussolini is about to gaslight the entire nation:
    "A senior administration official said he expects the president to begin publicly questioning the death toll as it closes in on his predictions for the final death count and damages him politically."

    Yes, those dead people aren't really dead at all. They're just resting, or perhaps pining for the fjords. Because, as noted sage Stephen Colbert once said, "reality has a well known liberal bias", and as we know, anything liberal must be destroyed.

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  2. Never heard of the RIbbon Creek incident - why am I surprised that McKeon got away with what amounts to a slap on the wrist for killing six young men? :(

    They were poor young men, therefore expendable. Rich failsons never have to face such perils.

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