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THE CREW

Editor in Chief

Editor

Editor/Design

Katie Lee McNeil

Aaron Rosenberg

Ian Adams

Philosopher

Commander Illustrator

Master Illustrator

Head Photographer

Editor

Oscar Valle

Lawrence Alfred

Mauricio Bustamante

Frankie Concha

Amanda Galindo

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Press Relations Jazmin Lucero.........................................................................................

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SCHEDULE OFLIVE SHOWS

Three live shows in these upcoming months!

First up: January 31st at The Stay Gallery

Second: Febuary 15th at Half-Off Books

Third: Febuary 28th at The Stay Gallery

6708 Greenleaf AvenueWhittier, California

90601

11140 Downey Ave, Downey, California

90241

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TABLE CONTENTSOF

Malleus Maleficarum Moderne - Joshua Craft

Markers: Montaigne and Derrida - Oscar Valle

A Cuckoo’s Calling Review - Addrie Moncayo

How Thug Notes is Helping Literature - Aaron Rosenberg

A Night in Night Vale - Ian Adams

Three Poems - Jason Guardado

Three Poems - Katie Lee McNeil

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MALLEUS MALEFICARUM MODERNE OR

Joshua Craft

A silhouette was seen in the tenth-floor window of the third apartment. In a commercial which featured more or less this same swatch of skyline as a soft-focused context to the sacramental epiphany of the commodity, someone said something which sounded like ‘…arguably the grayest city on earth.’ On nights such as the one resident to the appearance of the figure, it—the city—arguably was. The humanish incarnation was a spindly totem encased in a simmering blur of slewed pewter starred with far lights of farrer panes. After the authorities were called, it was known that the silhouette was, in fact, the reflected image of the silhouette of one Bryman Landau, a paralytic stockbroker who lived in the tenth floor penthouse of the sixth apartment, which stood prostrate directly across from the third apartment—depending on which satellite im-age of the earth from above one looked at, yet within the canon of the terrestrial inter-pretation of spatiality, this was undoubtedly the precise positioning of said apartments. Mr. Landau did not remember until the following night that it was, intriguingly, he who placed the initial bewildered phonecall to the authorities. The next next night it was known that the tenth-floor window of the third apart-ment belonged to an unoccupied room. The superintendent did not enter the premises to confirm this, because not only was it listed in his records, but also, the timelapse nightvision footage that he commissioned his burgeoning videographer niece to cap-ture from the roof of the fifth apartment showed that the curtains of the window did not move for the entirety of the ensuing night. The next next next night the curtains moved, they saw it with just their eyes, but it happened. You could see it from the street, it was obvious. It was not the stock-sway-ing engaged by wind or interior jostling, those things we think of when we think of curtains and movement thereof, but a strange, flagrant phenomenon, perhaps too un-usual to be compared to anything else. You could see it from the street with a telephoto lens. *** There is a woman somewhere. She is either entirely white or the light upon her is. Someone will see her, but she will be elsewhere. The seer is not somewhere, let alone

For Maria, Nadezhda,& Hypatia, but also for most of usA CONGEALED HISTORY OF ROD AND STAFF

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elsewhere—the seer is here, yet as they see her, they will feel that she is somewhere, or perhaps even elsewhere, or at the very least that she is most certainly not, by any furi-ous certainty; here. This is classical beauty and it is also classical love. *** The next night the following week after leaving a movie, The Blue Zooms of Stew Vegas, they realized—after the second feature; Lars on Marsha’s Left, which was both-ersomely tainted by the bled-through sonics from the adjacent auditorium’s presenta-tion of A Popcorn Box for Bryman of Baghdad—that the recent quietude of the matter of the tenth-floor window of the third apartment was obviously a signification of a si-multaneously dense but ethereal codex of primordial intimation and dimly livid assur-ances of eventual, though wholly unnamable dangers. They slept, but not without some second thoughts. They easily could have refused to sleep, is how fed up with obscurity and airy controversy they were. They wanted to make this clear, the matter crossing the mind upon waking from blankness to cross the tight cosmos of the bedroom to pro-cure a frozen-tile, witching-hour, abstrusely musical piss. The night they learned about the knife the calm dissolved. Cara Telissse fixed coffee and crossed herself a fifth time before fixing her morning coffee and taking a cab onto the mosque for evening prayer. She did not even live in the city any longer, and was a lapsed agnostic, ever since the calisthenics accident, so this progression of events was particularly surprising, and probably very befitting of a completely tasteful talkshow appearance to her. There had been fragmentary mentions of the knife in the day, discussion among the courtyards and balconies while auburn daylight enfolded the stupid, hypnagogic tableaus of the children, as a subterranean drumming of garish inference drooled all around the reliable cubic ambles of our bomb-bright internet. (Cara Telisse looked away, the ennui, and took the second-soonest cruiseship back to Panama for answers, and for cheaper hallucinogens. A track from her third solo effort plays beneath the end credits). It was learned, confirmed by experts through the use of cutting-edge thermal imaging technologies, by the time night arrived, that a knife was in the room of the tenth-floor window of the third apartment. *** A woman, late. Moon. Ankles, a skirt resembling wallpaper of an old hotel. The cup is near her but not enough to seem hers. A hat valiantly collates the natural shad-ows of the space with those incurred by the structure of her face, to ultimately obscure her eyes and the majority of her nose. She seems obscurely assembled, a person that fell together, out of a number of paintings with disengaged outlooks. She is somewhere. The cup is white and the cup and the woman parallel the choreographic dynamic of

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swirled motes in a warm ray. *** After the gazebo gunman was exonerated after foiling the subway gunman who had went up against police after commandeering the failed hijacker’s armor from the bloody parachute, the city began to remember the third apartment, after a bird un-fortunately died on a nearby block. There were speculations overseas, and so a feder-ally-funded nonprofit agreed to sponsor a local civic experiment to see if the strange results of the strange phenomena could be repeated. A renowned infant was hired to spend a night in the room of the sixth apartment correspondent to the room of the third apartment in question (it was, for the sake of biographers and veterinarians scouring this text in the future for doctorate research; the seventh floor, as the floors of the sixth apartment were much taller than those of the third apartment). The child was given a knife and advised to sit motionless at the curtains of the window for the whole duration of night. During the live broadcast of Erman Levithan (the infant)’s memo-rial services, it was proclaimed by a number of aggrieved persons that these tragedies (those of the child and the aforementioned bird), were throbbingly the results of the unright goings-on behind the window on the tenth floor of the third apartment. The gazebo gunman fainted at the memorial’s afterparty, presumably from what the press release later described as ‘ulcers,’ but could easily also have been hysterical grief and terror regarding the malignant nature of the apartment and its victims thus far. The word demon does not recoil and quake in seizing discord from being placed in this sentence. A half of a week passed, and it was noted that a young woman was once seen walking in the hall past the dreaded tenement room (square footage unresearched). It was not known what her name was or what she was doing in the apartment. This ab-sence of fact was avidly suspect. The question was raised by local religious leaders that if she belonged in the apartment, someone must have known whom she was. People do not belong places without someone else knowing, because anything upright would at some point involve someone else’s knowledge of its existence. We are born to be among each other. The life entirely refined to anonymity is one of a nefarious radius. It was thus deduced that she was either a prostitute or that she was murdered. With regards to what many hope to be the reality of modern morality, and with respects to (what are in the fields of academia) refined constructs of gender roles, it was confirmed on a national news-special that she was likely only murdered, us not making those other presumptions based merely upon the fact that she is, or was, a woman—it being the twenty-first century and everything.

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She in vicarious memory is white, aloft in the opposite of placenta—a stolid caul of afterness, the curled doll in recurring demolition. The four second-long, comput-er-generated estimation of her probable likeness and body language was aired, just amid the cable news outlets alone, within the first two hours of the assumption of her presumed existence, a total of nine hundred and ninety-seven times. Despite the award-winning efforts of various corners of the multiconglomerate corporate media tree of life, her father could not be reached for comment. A mediocre television actor was hired to weep on his behalf, and this man was later assassinated by militants in Africa (drowned in the back of an airplane) for reasons unrelated to the production, but it is nonetheless speculated that his dying words involved the third apartment and details that only investigators would have known. Months onward, they did not know what word to use to describe the shade of the shad-ow in the room containing the tenth floor window of the third apartment (it took years before people questioned why the floor only had one window), which had finally been entered, once the superintendent felt like leaning over and retrieving the key. The priest said I don’t know the word. I don’t know the word, he said. --I don’t know the word, proclaimed the priest. Since a satiating noun could not be found, the city had the room burnt down. The oth-er residents of the third apartment were assured that this operation could be done in a precise and respectful manner, and that their homes would not be affected. They would not even have to worry about their visits to the Memorial Reflecting Garden outside of the room being unduly disturbed by the official commotion, because the fire they would be using to destroy the premises had been sufficiently tested for soundproofing. It is not known completely what proceeded to occur. But it is known that the tempera-ture of the room, before the building burst into flames and collapsed, was markedly lower than it was before the fire, thus seeming to infer that some form of a supernatu-ral entity had made itself known to the officials who were not long for this earth. Giv-en that ghosts tend to the drop the temperature of the room they are in, empirically speaking. The radiant white young murdered face of the woman, which graven smoke bulbs of the smoldering apartment seemingly momentarily mimicked, was represented not only in the form of a statue in the city’s third largest park, but also as a gargantuan inflated puppet at that year’s Thanksgiving Day parade. A riot broke out that night near the wreckage of the apartment and three fish died. A rabbi was trampled, a mullah lost a limb, and on an intriguing, human-interest note, a limb was forcibly sewed onto a priest, whom after the initial shock of being knocked onto his bottom [British accent],

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did not finally mind this corporeal innovation. It was clear that the unsuccessfulness of the séance could be accredited to the decision to hold the ceremony across webcameras, because if one is being rational with oneself and others, how could a spirit be in two, let alone seven places at once? A year passed and the next autumn came. Nothing had happened. The site of the wreckage had stopped smoking, and so studios stopped filming things in front of it. Experts expected enhanced activity now that everyone was not expecting anything to happen, and especially now that there was less reasonable, codfiable cause than ever to believe that anything scientifically unnatural was occurring in the location. The spec-ter-stomachs and heretical hearts of the famous malicious Legions bank upon these and other fallacies. As if on cue, the spectral disorder was afoot the next night—the full year anniversary since the entire predicament had begun—when a young woman (who [from behind and across the street through a dimmed car window and bad glasses] looked like the entity of the murdered resident of the third apartment) was crossing the street a few blocks away. It is known that she was not the entity, because the priest who impaled her with a javelin of candlewax was keen to note that she had taken the manifestation of an earthly, or physical form—which did match the description of the entity per se. This detail was of much concern, because it did not mean, as the layman may infer, that she had possessed the body of a pre-existing person—for the woman here was very much the woman in question, just twice removed, in a sense—but rather that the forces of contemporary darkness had conspired so rigorously, and likely fed off of the rising presence of ignorance and disbelief regarding the haunting, that the spirit had enough compiled the mysterious energies required to physically manifest as an ap-parently human vessel. This would not have been of that much concern, given that the murdered woman had been the innocent player in the case, but it was bettable, upon the subsequent hardships she presumably experienced in the face of the public forget-ting her plight, abandoning their preliminary vow to avenge her savage obliteration, and you know, with women and how they are with grudges; that she was no longer an essence of traditional Light. Obviously this is why the priest leapt upon her and drove the nocturnally-forged item (which was admittedly[not by him] thirty-percent his own fluids crystalized, into her back. The authorities felt the body should be immediately removed from the public street before a crowd commenced, and so they carried the “corpse” up through the heart of a nearby loft. It was not until they reached the tenth floor that they found decent lighting. Five policemen and a hired jaguar stripped the woman’s body of its clothes. They were not sure why they did this but the demeanor which they maintained amidst the act felt warmly professional. The wildcat stood on

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its hindlegs, silhouetted in the window, behind curtains, as they offered it a low-ca-loric treat, before just simply biting the body of the woman. A prayer was said, in two languages and in sign language, and in a percussive tone the jaguar would appear to understand, and then the men went home, where they awoke their wives because the world was true. They all conceived children that night and all of the children went on to become congressional leaders. The children were so similarly powerful that some-times, even decades later, the parents could not tell them apart. The jaguar was hit by a train that night after leaving a nightclub. The body of the dead female demon was put into salt, then mailed to a volca-no. The city never mentioned the third apartment again, since news of the pedophilia on the set of the adaptation had taken the coyness out of it as a subject. The country, and the cities of the world however, were chilled and giddy at the tale of the ripe typ-ist Maybeline, gutted at the zenith of her libidinal splendor, butcher never brought to blood-justice, out there still today in stitches at detectives’ efforts, her vengeful neural remnants nestled amongst the walls of old hotels and apartments, anywhere a room resident to murder has eventually caught fire.*** By the next millennium, all the walls of all the rooms in all the buildings in the city were required to have doorways, and all the schools taught that sentences ended in ellipses—periods were frowned upon (as a first-strike penalty). All songs in record-ed form and in concert settings, public and private, were expected to fade out, rather than resolve. It was realized that most portions of the air did not have names, nor did a variety of smells in the sprawled quotidian thrall, and so this too was quickly healed. It was realized that Christ’s eyes were the colors of dusk and dawn, respectively (either evenly distributed, one to each eye, or fused into a single hue common among both irises—documentation being spotty—a few thousand died in a very serious war almost entirely related to this). Anyway, one day, no one decided to do anything anymore.

We would wait for after.

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Markers: Montaigne and DerridaOscar Valle

And my writing, died a posteriori. To those who have ever marked such a premise, must have known that in order to do so, the act must have begun with a lie. If it is an Other that is presupposed in the deliv-erance of a letter, then has not one lied already? Must it not pass through its developer? (And by pass through, I mean to have an economy with oneself, to then dispel ones ‘self ’ and to retain). As Montaigne in his essay or attempt named ‘Of Giving the Lie’, wrote that what he has written has been more than what he was, to then becoming what he would write. His text was reduced to a sentence, but below an attempt at an investigation of the lie as secret and vice versa will develop or at least try to, through Montaigne’s text onto an excerpt from one of the texts of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. (Der-rida’s text and commentary will come from Kirby Dick’s documentary called Derrida.) “Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book as made me – a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life; not concerned with some third-hand, extraneous purpose, like all other books.” It is no secret of Montaigne to say what writing is to him, and from what side of this occurrence he has expelled. He serves as the axiom of his auto-biography, what he is becoming, and at what point in ‘history’ he himself is well aware of his awareness, of his life as an author. His words and sentences were at any rate a priori trusted. Given that Montaigne writes of the lie as pre-supposing that a truth lies within oneself, but has been corrupted and either never spoken,

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never written or told as its opposite - which would correspond, and function with the latter and the former. But the lie can also maintain a perspective which has not been seen by the Other and is being held ‘within’ for the delay of an event or for the possibility of an experience. As Jacques Derrida wrote in The Gift of Death: How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to someone, or to some other who re-mains someone. It’s perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn’t belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret? There is so much that can be said about this excerpt from Derrida. But since we are revolving around the lie and the secret, then let us not lose sight of them. On sight they remain, what of them: at this moment, Montaigne poses a problem of the truthful liar. Derrida treats the secret as a gift, even though it may not be apparent here with one small reference. I find you elusive, extracted and (therefore) beautiful. Your nights are open to the void with winds, and in your sleep, in your dreams, you live as a promise for any awak-ening. Your hair was made black by the skin that touches stinging roses and those nights where no singing took place, but was desired. Down to the bones that have been so harshly ignored, not to mention the very flesh that built your heart, I now wait for you; you, the one I left behind, the one I made clear to, that my departure would be necessary, that in my return we would mend so that our love would one day dance on its own, giv-ing birth to many, dropping them next to springs and wells we build this day. I betrayed you and never told you. I took a risk of losing you by reaching where no one has ever – at least not now - reached. O prophecy! Why have you been held so holy throughout the ages! Do those who painted this holy image know that one still continues to live on after? That one could so easily take this event/non-event, as happened? Haunted now by

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that production of a thousand murmuring secrets, that out of respect for them and their ‘clock’, must be kept a secret. You haunted me even on my sublime night, my night of triumph and song. You came as a fluid dream, a plastic one, those with a timeline, those ever-produced sure assumptions of an extreme hope with a healthy and vivid wonder. Had I have never held a lie, we would have never seen each other naked.: Excuse me for my discordance, although I believe such ruptures are necessary. (Have I now confessed?). Without reserve this rupture above is meant to advance those questions that came before the rupture; not so much to answer but continue with the question.

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CUCKOO’SCALLING

THE

A ReviewAddrie Moncayo

The Cuckoo’s Calling, it would seem to the untrained eye, to be a debut novel of stunning quality written by an Iraq war veteran about the cult of celebrity that we in the West have erected and chin rubbing mystery of murder. It in fact however is just another stunning work of fiction written under JK Rowling’s assumed pen name Robert Galbraith. Though anyone accustomed to Rowling’s work (whether they were razed on her heartfelt Harry Potter series as I was or they know of her masterful novel of political schism and class disparity ‘The Casual Vacancy’) will recognize the themes of death,

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loss, love and the power of life’s relationships. In this novel detective Cormoran Strike is on the hunt for a murderer in the midst of London interweaved with a model, a rapper from America, and a fashion designer who know the beautiful model Lula Landry who fell from her luxury apartment. The story touches on issues of celebrity life, race relations (black and white and biracial Lula) in this supposedly ‘post-racial world’ we live in. J. K. Rowling has admitted to relishing using the anonymity of Mr. Robert Galbraith. With this false identity she worked with her agent to create a work of fiction that would not come with the burden of having the Wizarding World legacy behind her, as some said that the shadow of Harry Potter was rather cast over her first adult novel published two years ago. The anonymity broke last summer on July the 14th that Robert Galbraith, the veteran, did not exist and in that realization some kicked themselves for not picking up on Rolling’s identity sooner.

The Cuckoo’s Calling is a wonderful complex novel about modern life and a damn good mystery fraught with betrayal and red herrings galore. This novel reinforces Rowl-ing’s position as a master story teller and observer of the strengths and failings in in-dividuals and cultures at large. Atop that you will be puzzling through each chapter to work out just what happened to Luna, be it suicide, murder and if so by who and the why of it all. I read through the novel in just two days, and I believe anyone else who picks it up will have a hard time putting it down till they hit the adrenalin drenched conclusion. With the publisher’s announcement that an sequel will be coming out later this year you can expect to find me reading it on night one, and I should hope you read along to see what the noise is about.

Case and point.

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HOW THUG NOTESIS HELPING

LITERATUREAaron Rosenberg

In this age of breakneck media con-sumption, what was short six years ago looks lengthy with the modern eye. Atten-tion spans dwindled as the novel fell out of style with the masses and shorter mediums took over. Cliffnotes helped by condensing the novel down to allows for more under-stand during the reading, and Sparknotes embraced the internet for an even shorter

summary. It would only make sense that the book summaries would get shorter, and the Youtube channel Thug Notes proves that. Thug Notes turns a novel into a five minute video, complete with a summary, and a full analysis of themes, symbols, and motifs. While it’s easy to paint the broad strokes of a summary, Thug Notes man-ages to be both funny and brilliant while providing a summary. When providing a literary analysis, the channel proves to be exceptionally insightful. Thug Notes is hosted by Sparky Sweets, PhD, who is played by comedian Greg Edwards. Sparky Sweets provides a spot on summary and analysis every epi-sode, all while talking like a true gangster. He applies language usually only heard on the streets perfectly to these novels and that allows for those familiar with the slang

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to understand the books better (while laughing hysterically) and those more fa-miliar with the books to get a better feel for the slang (also while laughing hysteri-cally). Greg Edwards provides a streetwise eloquence to the character that keeps the viewer engaged, amused, and helps with the understanding of the novel. Thug Notes has tackled such books as Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, 1984, The Hobbit, and releases a new video weekly. Thug Notes makes for an easy access point for literature with it’s language. Take this excerpt from Thug Note’s summary of Lord of the Flies: “First Jack be too much of a bitch to kill for food, but soon enough dis gangster busts his cherry and gets some of dat good pork. All the while the youngests be acting scuured cause some little fool be saying he saw a monster, but Ralph be like “Chill Shawt, it’s all in your head son.” Any listener, even one unfamiliar with the slang can pick up on each phrase’s meaning intu-itively. Greg Edwards preforms with such enthusiasm that it’s hard not to be engaged

in his explanations. Greg Edwards has expressed that the idea behind Thug Notes is that litera-ture is treated as an exclusive club when it shouldn’t be treated as such. Edwards has stated: “For many, it’s not about making the ideas of literature universal—instead it’s about building themselves up to a virtually inaccessible plane and saying: if you want to truly understand literature, you have to get on this high-brow level with me.” Thug Notes strives to change the entire playing field of understanding classic literature. There’s a common misconception that to “get” that classics, one needs a degree in English literature and years of dedication in that field to understand it, but that’s not true. One simply needs to pick up a book and begin reading. Classic literature may seem like a daunting challenge to many, but Thug Notes proves that it’s simpler than most make it out to be.

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A NIGHT IN NIGHT VALEIan Adams

On a night like any other, it happened. The only way it was not like any other was that something happened worth repeating so… I sup-pose it was unlike any other actually. In the Lar-go Theater in Los Angeles the cast of “Welcome to Night Vale” appeared on their fourth stop on a seven city west coast tour. The venue is an old theater that has been repurposed by hip younger people with mannequins surging with electricity. In the court yard an intermingling of youngish persons from all over the state (as far as San Fran-cisco and Hemit) brushed elbows and drank from the bar in their cosplay costumes. Several couples arrived, half dressed as a charming scientist and half dressed as a sweater vested reporter. One man handed out flyers for the upcoming Mayoral election to promote Hiram McDaniels, Literally a Five Headed Dragon- Who cares? The crowd permuted and accepted those individuals who might be considered ‘different’. Some wore leath-er coats and stalking, in dimensions of spindly tall and corpulently round. Gay and lesbian couples expressed open affection by the bar and the mer-chandise counter. The atmosphere was warm and

inviting to every guest. In the theater red curtains framed a piano and nine bear hanging light bulbs, casting an om-inous light as The Mountain Goats played on the speaker system. Opening the nights events was Sara Watkins (accompanied by The Song Birds) played a set and the Weather segment later in the show. The crowd erupts in applause when Cecil Baldwin (Cecil Gershwin Palmer) enters center stage to welcome his listeners to Night Vale. Over the show’s progression a number of performers come on stage to join Cecil in moving the per-formance along. Jasika Nicole (from television’s Fringe plays Intern Dana) and Dylan Marron (from the web series Whatever This Is, plays the Scientist Carlos) perform recurring roles that tickle the listeners and move along the harrowing tale of the horrifying, qusi-reptilian librarian on the loose. Surprise guest James Urbaniak (from Adult Swim’s The Venture Brothers) plays Intern

James Urbaniak who has a tragic past with the Night Valian librarians.

After the show I met with the writers/ creators of the show and the star of “Welcome to Night Vale” Cecil Baldwin. In the Lago’s open court yard, with a flurry of fan’s bustling for an

autograph I spoke to them about the show.

Q: What goals do you have for “Welcome to Night Vale” in its progression? It seems to be escalating

in a drama that is headed for something.

Joseph Fink: No, I don’t see an ‘end goal’ for the show. We focus more on week to week stories. Though we do currently have stories, plot lines, that we’ve worked out resolutions to but, ideally we have more stories as long as we want to make

this.

Q: I certainly hope for years of Night Vale.

JF: I hope to make it for you all.

Q: “Welcome to Night Vale” is viewed mostly through the perspective of the character Cecil as a

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narrator. This episode had a number of characters. What character that is not Cecil is the most fun to

write?”

JF: The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home. She has this great way of speaking and it’s nothing like Cecil. Mara [Wilson] is won-

derful. She can be a different kind of creepy.

Jeffry Cranor: Dana the Intern is my favorite char-acter to write. I think that her character is so hon-est and adds so much gravity. I… I can’t tell what is says about me, but the story revolving around

being misplaced in time, being so lonely… it is a lot there.

Q: With the other voices on the show, from Dana to Hiram McDaniels, the listener gets a larger

sense of this world. Especially in the back and forth. Would you say Cecil is an unreliable nar-

rator?

JF: I’d say Cecil is about as reliable as any other person in real life. That is to say, not very.

Q: Cecil, how did you become involved with this project to now be the recognizable voice of Night

Vale?”

Cecil Baldwin: Well, I am a part of a theater group back in New York [The Neo-Futurists] where I worked with Jeffry and some other performers involved with the show. And Joseph came to one performance where, I think, I was doing a play where I talk about having a voice that naturally

sounds like an announcer voice. So Joseph said ‘Yeah- he sounds like a radio guy.’

So, I read the script and that’s how I got it.

Q: Can I also say it is wonderful having a gay pro-tagonist in a series so positively represented?

CB: You may and high-five to that. (And then we high-fived. It was rad.)

Joseph Fink

“Dana the Intern is my favorite,Her character is so honest and

adds so much gravity.”

Dylan Marron & Cecil Baldwin play the cherished love of the broadcaster Cecil and the scientist

Carlos.

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Q: What is it like playing character Cecil?

CB: It’s the most fun; the fullness of the character. Where I can be really creepy, and bouncy funny- look at this cat video- and so serious in the span of a few moments. That is great. And so much of Cecil is me so there is little preparation. The easi-

est thing to be is yourself.

Q: The writing in “Welcome to Night Vale” is fan-tastic, and so specific. What writers do you read that you find inspirational or you might recom-

mend?

JF: Not a lot in the themes of Night Vale are my interest. Yes I loved Twin Peaks and stories with a lot of… conspiracy but one writer I am a fan of is Deb Olin Unferth (short story writer and con-tributor to Noon). I do love language, and Night Vale’s language draws on her work like the great

novel ‘Vacation’. Thomas Pynchon’s novels with this complex paranoia and conspiracy that ulti-

mately leads nowhere are big for us.Q: Not HP Lovecraft then? As Commonplace Books website (who “Welcome to Night Vale” is in association with) sells a book on the unused story

ideas of HP Lovecraft.

JC: In so far as his use of horror elements and un-known. But not really in other regards.

JF: I personally hate Lovecraft. He had respectable influence on modern horror but he was a horrible

person who was xenophobic and racist.

Q: Tonight’s show is quite different to what lis-teners might hear on their computers bi-month-ly. Can you talk about that? The difference of the

writing or anything?

JC: This specific episode [The Librarian] began with the bit Joseph wrote where we have Cecil tell them ‘the left side of the audience screamed!’ and so on. And we brought it to Cecil and we said ‘If

this audience participation doesn’t work we can write alternate scripts. And he told us ‘Oh- they’ll participate.’ So that lead to fleshing out the story.

Jeffrey Cranor

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For You and MeJason Guardado

How can this be,

Why must this be, I know its cause of me…

Cause of me…

Falling down is all I seem to do around you,

Mopping up the salty waters between us.

Meandering rivers between us,

Cant i please just fix this problem for,

You and me…

For…you and me…

22

Was it Worth it?Jason Guardado

Every now, every now and then I wake,

To more empty pages and unattained goals,

Maybe its cause I’m obsessed with the nonexistent idea of truth

And as I, and as I look at everyone’s unhappiness,

It doesn’t bring a sense of

belongingness and that’s just sad.

23

My Oh myJason Guardado

My oh my

How things have changed,

I look at you, so unaware..

I did what I do in dreams,

Made up, made up, made up a person,

Now to be with,

Now I woke up..

Now I’m a awake and your still asleep

Nothing will fix this feeling,

Not even money no money,

Feed me, feed me, feed me, feed me,

Feed my mind and my soul,

My oh my things have changed,

My oh my things have changed,

My oh my things have changed,

My oh my things have changed.

24

February 4, 2012Katie Lee McNeil

I fell asleep near the infidel of my backyard,

my brain felt tattered, drowsy, a dybunk.

It spoke with a curt,

claiming to see my better prophecy-

a seed already sown.

I had to speculate, see if it was grown.

Only dirt, soil below, a madrigal sang

hydrophobia notes of sprouts.

I cried in manufacture

holding a mental handgun inside.

Impersonal was not this voice,

nor cautious or restricted.

My internal carousel spun-

SLOWER, Slower, and slower...

25

Velvet greens were standing. Heroic.

Invisible fingertips pulled down the robe.

My eyes were lifted on high, infidel out of sight.

The prophecy was here.

It was here, in my backyard.

26

March 5, 2012Katie Lee McNeil

I’ve got fear written inside,

down to the brutalized guts of worth and pride

a child, you remind me,

so careless for free.

I can hardly taste your spirit below,

above you cast me a physical glow,

Shake me clear

Under your sheets, beneath your private veneer-

speak kindly, I’m scared.

Your brain sets forth a logic despair,

I came to your repair and drag your worms behind.

I own a lust, I cannot seem to find.

27

28

March 5, 2012Katie Lee McNeil

Ah winter.

The cold depths of hours,

seeping so slowly-creeping.

Under doors,

not missing the locked, chained.

Windows ice up-competition to the toes,

curled so near to the face,

any cool sheeted bed fits.

Still. Unmoving.

The most warm of fires comes so little,

it is a being-another life.

29

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The Modern Corsair for January 2014 Issue Number 4

Happy New Year!This issue was: mystery. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got three dead bodies, a

killer, and a ballroom of people just waiting to find out who did it.The next issue will be LGBQT. Also included: every sexuality conceivable.

Also the ones you can’t conceive.Check out our subreddit at www.reddit.com/r/themoderncorsair

Send all entries, comments, or suggestions tothemoderncorsair@gmail.com. We’d be happy to hear from our readers.

Special thanks to:Gabriel Enamorado

The Stay GalleryJoseph Fink

Jeffrey CranorCecil Baldwin

And the biggest thanks of all to:You.

Not you as the reader of this magazine, specifically you as the humanbeing reading this text in this moment. Keep on reading, beautiful person.

CREDITS