Goats from Underground

“Do you think the word love gets thrown around too much these days?”
“Naw, probably just the right amount.”

St. Oran was a druid in Scotland who converted to Christianity and followed St. Columba around. 

St. Columba was trying to build the famous abbey in Iona, but it collapsed every night. Supposedly it was cursed by the devil.

St. Columba was told by a voice that it could never be finished until a living man was buried alive in the abbey. So Oran volunteered and the chapel was finished. But one day Oran pushed his head through the wall and said that he’d seen the afterlife and that there was no heaven and there was no hell. Alarmed by this Columba had Oran reburied and made sure he could never get out again.

Six-Gun Gorilla is O’Neil, a gorilla. As a baby he is trapped in Africa and brought to the United States. In Colorado he is sold to Bart Masters, a prospector. Masters is a kind man and treats O’Neil well, and O’Neil grows up to love Masters. Masters teaches O’Neil how to dig, fetch firewood, haul up buckets of water, cook, clean, and load and fire a revolver. Unfortunately, Masters is murdered by bad man Tutt Strawhan, leader of the Strawhan Gang, for what Masters knows about “the great motherlode.” 

When O’Neil finds Masters’ body, he swears revenge. O’Neil straps on a bandolier and two six-shooters and begins tracking the murderers across a hundred miles of Colorado mountains and badlands. He picks them off one by one, meanwhile discovering a talent for holding up stagecoaches and using them to chase fleeing gunmen. O’Neil dies as he kills Strawhan.

— From Jess Nevins‘ Encyclopaedia of Pulp Heroes

Apparently no one knows who created the original Six-Gunn Gorilla, and the rights have fallen into the public domain, but now someone’s only gone and done a sci-fi comic book of it. More here: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2013/06/05/six-gun-gorilla-preview-simon-spurrier-jeff-stokely-boom-studios/

Books I’ve Read Recently

Playback by Raymond Chandler. 

Black and Blue by Ian Rankin.

Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer. When I get my time machine fixed, I’m going to warn myself not to read this piece of CERN fanfic. Jesus Christ.

Snowdrops by A.D. Miller.

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. It’s about a Ghanian boy who moves to the U.K. and he’s just a kid but he wants to solve a murder and piss in bleached toilets, it’s perfect.

Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden. About that poor kid who was born in a North Korean concentration camp, and escaped at age 22. Harrowing. 

Everything is Perfect When You’re a Liar by Kelly Oxford. 

Irma Voth by Miriam Toews. It’s not the sort of thing I normally read, but I really liked it. Canadian Mennonite girl grows up on Mexican farm with shitty, abusive dad and *secrets* and runs away to the city and overall it was pretty good.

I love easing myself after Mamma puts bleach in the toilet. The bleach makes mighty bubbles, then it’s like easing yourself on a cloud. I save up a long one for specially. Nobody’s allowed to flush the cloud away until I’ve done my special piss on it. 
….

Me: ‘Mamma go sound you when she finds out you used all the bleach.’
Lydia: ‘I’ll just tell her it was you. I’m not the one who has to ease myself on a cloud all the time.’
Me: ‘No I don’t.’
I don’t have to do it all the time. I only wanted to see what God felt like.

from Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman.

THERE’S ALWAYS HONEY IN AFGHANISTAN

BEST. LINE. EVER.