THAT KILLED THE POPPYCOCKALORUM and the Cockahoopatrice-- beware these. We see some value, that's the ticket, in persisting strongly against such croaking, compromising entities. "If the fool will persist in his folly, he will become wise." --Blake. Of course, one must remind oneself to acknowledge responsibility for the potentially maladaptive general effects of your un-deflected folly's persistence... When I Lay Dead in Thessaly, by Clark Ashton Smith. We feature an article from THE VAULT OF SLACK, current issue; the topic is recalculating the advent of true X-Day in accordance with the recent prophetic analysis espoused by Rev. Trixie von Mothersbaugh. Giant Spiders in Louisiana, again. KrOB appears and we talk shop. Dr. H. Owll also dilated upon that famous Arizona renegade outlaw, the Apache Kid. The lore of Arizona is always of interest. It includes accounts of "Indian massacres," or, as we call them today, Native American Direct Actions.

--A STORY by Charles G. Finney, read and interpreted by Dr. H. Owll, gives us our title for this episode. Providing this presentation, we ask sympathy for one Crotalus atrox, a creature rarely accorded any by the bulk of the population. And, archival material used in the "palimpsest" show collation method supports this original narrative. With: Mobius Rex, Chicken John, KrOB. Jeff Robins. Michael Peppe, Clark Ashton Smith, VJ Pussycat, William Ernest Henley, Stan Freberg and the late Dr. Ralph Fielding Snell.

AS PROFILED in Top-Secret SubGenius Mandatory Memoranda --is the subject of our sermon. We particularly dilate upon the efficacy of the three-by-five card in putting these SubGenius Church/Cult Principles into magnum motion. Poetry of Clark Ashton Smith. And then KrOB comes in. Monologue becomes dialogue. We close at 1:00 AM as usual, but KrOB takes command and continues...

AFTER THE FIRST HALF HOUR, or The Button Got Me Again. Yes, once again, while entertaining guests in the Studio, we forgot to press the infernal Red Button-- a necessary ritual if you want your show on "RV" to be heard. At 31:50 the real show begins-- up to then you're listening to last week's show. After that-- KrOB and Yours Truly are talking about Joe Laudati's GWANGI tribute film (forthcoming) when suddenly the TRUE SHOW for October 24th 2025 begins. Guests are Underground Cartoonist and fine artist Appel Berry and African Cyberpunk author Nikhil Singh, whose recent works include the novel CLUB DED and its sequel DAKINI ATOLL (both recommended) as well as a Graphic Novel. First the enchanting Appel interviews Dr. H. Owll about some of his more disreputable episodes, including exploring caves, forbidden tombs and underground spider-haunted tunnels, not to mention grave robbing (few people, in most cases, can get me talking about this stuff). We speak of the clandestine Archie Comics erotica online and other comics-related topics. The second part is a conversation with Nikhil (at 1:23), who reveals various strongly held opinions. An information-heavy show in a conversational mode-- what we aim for in this show. SORRY about the missing first half hour-- no one regrets it more than us. WHY do they HAVE that Furshlugginer button, anyway? If you forget to push it, your show doesn't happen-- it's like the lever in the mad scientist's laboratory which, when pulled, causes the whole thing to blow up. Why install such a device in the first place? An informed public wants to know. We close with a reading from CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN magazine, issue #42, based on an article by David Yuers with Editor Don Smeraldi, "The Many Shapes of Horror.."

IS SAID (BY BORGES) to be one of the most beautiful book titles in all of literature. We spoke a little of this, but were checked by the unexpected (and welcome) appearance of KrOB. We still discussed ramifications of the story of Sindbad the Sailor's Voyages as we ventured into a mutual favorite, Harryhausen's notable THE 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD. And there's more poetry and pedantry along with the usual interspersed Archival Recordings. The Dream of Alexander the Great also features, which was itself a dream... We talk of the East and the West as they are found in the Noosphere. Problems in the filming of WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (that film is itself a problem) creep into the conversation. How a snipped-out coupon from a Silver Age SUPERMAN comic book for an amusement park ride was received-- an Eyewitness account. Reminisces about Castleberry's Bar-B-Cue Sandwiches as part of the Drive-In Snack Bar array in the long-gone earlier day may be heard. Well, we urge listeners to hear and see our NEW show on Twitch (via Zoom) on Sunday at 6:00 PM...

--AN EXAMINATION BY BORGES from SEVEN NIGHTS. We begin with W.S. Merwin's "Leviathan," a translation of an archaic Early Christian (Anglo-Saxon) poem. Then we set forth to examine the phenomenon called Nightmare. Soon Borges is in control, informing and cross-referencing in his familial fashion. Perhaps this topic is one more suitable for those of us who principally occupy the night. Borges was a founder, and principal practitioner, of postmodernist literature, a movement in which literature distances itself from life situations in favor of reflection on the creative process and critical self-examination... Widely read, and profoundly erudite, Borges was a polymath who could discourse on the great literature of Europe and America and who assisted his translators as they brought his work into different languages, influenced by the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, but his own fiction "combines literary and extra-literary genres in order to create a dynamic, electric genre," to quote Alberto Julián Pérez in the DICTIONARY OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY. Pérez also said that Borges's work "constitutes, through his extreme linguistic conscience and a formal synthesis capable of representing the most varied ideas, an instance of supreme development in and renovation of narrative techniques. With his exemplary literary advances and the reflective sharpness of his meta-literature, he has effectively influenced the destiny of literature."

In his preface to LABYRINTHS: Selected Stories and Other Writings, André Maurois wrote that Borges "composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style. Argentine by birth and temperament, but nurtured on universal literature, Borges... [had] no spiritual homeland."

Nearly unknown in most of the world until 1961, in his early sixties he was awarded the Prix Formentor, the International Publishers' Prize, an honor he shared with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Prior to winning the award, according to Gene H. Bell-Villada in BORGES AND HIS FICTION: A Guide to His Mind and Art, "Borges had been writing in relative obscurity in Buenos Aires, his fiction and poetry read by his compatriots, who were slow in perceiving his worth or even knowing him." But soon a collection of his short stories, FICCIONES, was simultaneously published in six different countries and he was invited by the University of Texas to come to the United States to lecture, the first of many international lecture tours. His lasting appeal to us partly results from his prodigious erudition, which becomes immediately apparent in our podcast-- the multitude of literary allusions from cultures around the globe that are contained in his writing. "The work of Jorge Luis Borges," Anthony Kerrigan wrote in his introduction to the English translation of FICCIONES, "is a species of international literary metaphor. He knowledgeably makes a transfer of inherited meanings from Spanish and English, French and German, and sums up a series of analogies, of confrontations, of appositions in other nations' literatures. His Argentinians act out Parisian dramas, his Central European Jews are wise in the ways of the Amazon, his Babylonians are fluent in the paradigms of Babel." From the sublime then to the ridiculous as we engage in quoting our earlier presentations. A hideous "earworm" is indulged as we recall the smarmy music and lyrics to a crass children's cartoon show. From there we take several leaps into the poetic world of Clark Ashton Smith. How about Stan Freberg? We have him too. A sufferer from Roderick Usher Syndrome, Dr.H. Owll takes refuge in a recording of the old Live Show back in the Chicken John days. We present Shelley's "Ozymandias." Finally the Arachnologist within prompts a recitation of Whitman's "A Noiseless, Patient Spider." Do join Dr. H. Owll on his own upcoming show The Ask Dr. Hal! Show, The Home Edition. This will be presented at 6 PM Pacific, 9 PM Eastern on Twitch via Zoom, easily reachable at askdrhalshow.com on Sunday, October 19th. Join us afterward at our interactive post-Show Chat Room...

OR, DR. FRANK BAXTER, C'EST MOI! We discourse on that lengthy molecule, DNA. Y'know, we're still reverberating over here from the colossal disaster of our last week's show. That was when I forgot to press the Red Button, a portion of technological obfuscation inflicted upon our helpless, innocent show. Only the latter half was salvageable. Our show, The Thread of Life, is about heredity, DNA and how it works. The inspiration comes from early mental molding as a viewer in elementary school (Flossie Wiley in Urbana, Illinois) when shown the Bell (Telephone) Science Series, wherein the affable Dr. Frank Baxter gave me an overview of Genetics for the first time. The screenplay was by Rowland Barber, a writer perhaps best known for the 1960 novel The Night They Raided Minsky's. Owen Crump directed; Robert McKimson, Warner Bros. cartoon animator and close associate of Bob Clampett, directed the animation. Want to see a truly kool kartoon? WATCH the next episode of The Ask Dr. Hal! Show, The Home Edition on October 19th, 6 PM-- we're showing UPA's The Telltale Heart.

BEFORE THEN it's just from a rerun of last week's show. We were putting out a show, KrOB was visiting-- when suddenly we realized that WE HAD FORGOTTEN TO PRESS THE FURSHLUGGINER RED BUTTON! You see, they have this inexplicable set-up here where you have to press a red button or your show won't go out. Why, no one can say. We'll use the notes to recreate the first hour and a half when we do the next one. But here are two hours of non-rerun. It is to be hoped that someone heard us after 37:50, which would have been around 11:37 PM on Friday... Press red button when starting, blue button when ending.

AS RELATED BY EARLIER AUTHORS. The emphasis tends to be on the monocularity of the Aramaspii more than their cephalothoracic configuration, but their observed enmity to the Gryphons comes in for more than a mention. And, there's the 700 mile-long Eel. David Seville and the genesis of the three performing, ullulating Neotamias obscurus. Stan Freberg does "Heartbreak Hotel." Polyphemus's family tree. Janor shows Aunt Bertha his candy cane. There is a mention of Liquid Chicken. Finally, we dilate upon the obscured prophecy concerning the Perytons, strange inhuman creatures fleeing the Atlantaean catastrophe. Their plumage may either have been blue or green.

AFTER OUR RETURN from Burning Man-- dropping in, KrOB diverts the course of the Show toward a more intimate and conversational plateau. So the notes on Earth 18, an extraterrestrial guidebook, were partially offered and then interrupted. We touch upon Victor and Henry Frankenstein's experiments and methods. Building a creature from parts was certainly not easy, but Victor Frankenstein's greatest achievement was bringing a collection of dead material to life. The details of the procedure in the novel are frustratingly vague. Author and theorist Mary Shelley writes about a "spark of life", which could be almost anything. However, an electrical spark is the most likely contender.

The century before FRANKENSTEIN, A MODERN PROMETHEUS was written had seen tremendous advances in the understanding of electricity. One of the first people to investigate the phenomenon seriously was Stephen Gray. He was living at Charterhouse, a kind of retirement home for those who had served their country. Gray spent his retirement years conducting electrical experiments and he made a number of important discoveries. He devised spectacular demonstrations to illustrate his theories, one of which became known as "the flying boy".

Charterhouse also had a school attached and no one seemed to have minded Gray borrowing one of the boys for his experiments. The child lay on a platform that was hoisted towards the ceiling. The boy was charged with static electricity and he could then use his hands to attract pieces of paper. Sparks could be drawn from his nose. In our case, we hope to inculcate a Vital spark into a corpus assembled from disparate sources and then made to live.

OR, NOT ONE BUT TWO GUESTS-- yes, this episode features a visit from two guests: Kimmie Joan, who has joined with us in the past, and KrOB, who, finally having been persuaded to don headphones and address a microphone, extend the show for an extra hour, as in days of yore (yore being the time of old RV Studios across from Bruno's bar, and later the technology-plagued Impact Arts Hub at Mission and 15th). Conversation, as generally understood, is principally interactive communication between two or more people. It is significant-- the development of conversational skills and etiquette is an important part of socialization-- but also may provide a vivacious form of entertainment, robustly enjoyable, the age-old pleasure of being engaged by following a back-and-forth palaver overheard. We know that the development of conversational skills in a new language is the traditional focus of language teaching and learning. Although "Converal," or Conversation Analysis, is an extant branch of Sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational interpenetration, our business is one of entertaining the listening audience... Conversation, as we see it, is the kind of speech that happens informally, symmetrically, and for the purposes of establishing and maintaining social ties. This powerful phenomenon adds immeasurably to the entertainment value of our traditional radio shows and podcasts. And so the attentive listener will find, as in our last, extra hour we chat informally in a natural way.

ARE WITH US ALWAYS, in that this particular presentation takes its name from the former live nightclub act. Those primary iterations remain parameters for the current incarnation, preserved out of nostalgia and unexamined memory. That show is gone, but will return again in future time, according to its premise and prophecy. Perhaps more toward the end of the year. But... whither the audience? Will anyone come?

CLARK ASHTON SMITH, so often our Muse and Guide in surveying the Cosmos from our preferred angle. In many ways, his life was a modest affair. He was born and lived the majority of his life in Auburn, California, before it ever became a decent-sized town-- in Smith’s early years a settlement of approximately one thousand people. It is difficult today to visualize just how rural, how remote a place Auburn was at the turn of the 20th century. Educational opportunities of any kind were more than ordinarily limited. And following primary school, Smith, a lifelong autodidact, opted not to continue on to high school, feeling he could better educate himself at the local library, an assessment with which his understanding parents agreed. In his productive youth and young manhood, his early poetic creations led Smith to contact with the contemporary poet George Sterling, known then as the "Keats of the West." A signal influence on Smith, Sterling championed the younger man’s work and was responsible for exposing him to Baudelaire’s poetry, which would become another important source for his work. Despite having been considered a significant American poet during his lifetime, associated with a group of California-based writers including Ambrose Bierce and Jack London, Sterling is largely forgotten by contemporary literary and cultural studies, perhaps even overshadowed at this point by his former protégé. The culmination of this phase of Smith’s writing was his 1920 blank verse poem, The Hashish Easter, or The Apocalypse of Evil (A self-taught artist, Smith created an extensive set of illustrations to accompany the poem which have never been published alongside it, arousing hope that a print edition of the poem combining pictures and text may yet be published). One should take note of his developing epistolary friendship with H.P. Lovecraft. This coincided with the start of his career as a published fiction writer, pretty much all of which occurred before Lovecraft’s death in 1937. (Smith had written novels as a youth, but they remained unpublished until well after his lifetime.) In part, the reason for Smith’s turn to prose was practical: he needed money in order to look after his aging parents. At the same time, his stories were not divorced from the material of his poetry; rather, they were a new way of approaching the same concerns. And it’s for his fiction that Smith has remained best known. Many of Smith’s stories are set in one of several invented locales: the prehistoric realms of Hyperborea and Poseidonis, the imaginary medieval France of Averoigne, and the far future world of Earth, called Zothique. Then there were narratives set on utterly alien locales far beyond these. It is not unsafe to say that the characters in these stories, driven by complex and human motivations, brought a more complicated psychology into the pages of the pulp magazines in which they were published. The playful letters Smith and Lovecraft exchanged led to an equally playful sharing of elements from one another’s stories; though Smith was not Lovecraft’s disciple. Rather, he was an artistic equal engaged in exploring his own concerns through occasionally shared material. Distinguishing it all is its repeated focus on characters who pursue a goal that simultaneously promises to fulfill their desires and to result in their destruction.

...OF RELIGION, Human Grace and Nations in the poetic interpolations occurring within this presentation.

The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness

The Argument: As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences.

PRINCIPLE 1st That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from their Genius. which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit & Demon.

PRINCIPLE 2d As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius

PRINCIPLE 3d No man can think write or speak from his heart, but he must intend truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual

PRINCIPLE 4. As none by traveling over known lands can find out the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists

PRINCIPLE. 5. The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.

PRINCIPLE 6 The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation...

AND DISCOURSES UPON A MULTITUDE of other topics from our once and future guest, Jett, distinguish this episode. This particular fowl haunts marshes and shores and, as we shall see, roosts in trees. Found in a wide variety of aquatic habitats, around both fresh and salt water, including marshes, rivers, ponds, mangrove swamps, tidal flats, canals, rice fields and soggy ground, it is a striking and beautiful creature. Yes, the Black-crowned Night Heron nests in groves of trees, and some of these are threatened, in Oakland, by the usual menace, a "developer." Evolution trained this bird to habituate thickets, in some places on the ground, usually on islands or above water, perhaps to avoid predators. Well, sir, we start with Clark Ashton Smith, then veer wildly to Jett's efforts on behalf of the Natural World. A conversation ensues. Could this be your cup of Moxie?

RELATED as he told it. This concludes the sometimes jagged, sometimes not truly audible presentation of Sindbad's adventures attempted over the last salvageable episodes. The sole survivor (as usual) of an attack by enormous sea monsters, Sindbad the pragmatist manages to divert even this turn of misfortune to his favor. On a mission to the Sultan of Serendib (present-day Sri Lanka, traditionally called Ceylon), Sindbad somehow, after a while, ends up married and settled down in what turns out to be a city (mostly) inhabited by demons. Always some kind of unexpected problem... This story is found, of course, in that wonderful book THE ONE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT. Very soon after its publication in the West, there began a debate about the origins of many of these tales, including those of Sindbad the Sailor. Now, scholars agree today that the “Arabian Nights” were never a single work, but a composite of popular stories originating from different parts of the world (today’s Iraq, Iran, Egypt, India, Central Asia and China). At first they were transmitted orally, before being committed to writing, starting as early as the 10th century, it is supposed, and probably continuing for another 600 years to around the 16th century. And if you go to the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” the current edition will tell you “most of the tales best known in the West—- primarily those of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad -—were much later additions to the original corpus.” Such a process has often taken place to enlarge and yet adorn a received text. Beware of those (French inspired) snooty critics who disparage everything. Just as the shaping force of Convergent Evolution creates unrelated forms which nonetheless resemble each other, so this evolutionary process creates similitude among accounts within Epics. Then, too, there is a historical dimension these critics are not interested in. May you enjoy the narrative as presented here. Later, KrOB drops by...

--AS TOLD by the wanderer of legend in THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT. Continuing our presentation of these tales, we follow Sindbad to strange archipelagos. The narration does not obscure in his own behalf the extremes he goes to just for survival: cast on a fatal shore he conceals from his starving fellows that he has access to an unknown source of food. Again, as before, he must make the journey through a cryptic cavern on a raft, which once saved the day before, so why not again? Serendib, in the present-day the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon or Tabrobane is the scene of more adventures, an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Deccan Peninsula by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest, India in the northwest, Andaman and The Nicobar Islands in the northwest, and Myanmar (Burma) through the Bay of Bengal. Sindbad's friendship with the Sultan of Serendib gets him in hot water in the next and final episode, the crowning Seventh Voyage of Sindbad. No stranger to many of these realms, poet and world traveler David Normal is again our guest, as is KrOB later in the program. The final 18 minutes are optional.

--CONTINUING IN THE SERIES from the THOUSAND NIGHTS AND A NIGHT, some of Islamic literature's finest tales. The image shows two giant birds (Rocs) smashing Sindbad's ship with giant rocks (minerals). One of Sindbad's most disturbing adversaries we encounter here-- the horrendous, ghastly Old Man of the Sea. Helping the impact is the fact that it is plausible, or at least less implausible, than the others. Striking is the moment of horror when Sindbad discovers that the Old Man may be only quasi-human. To escape his predicament, the famed traveler resorts to quite extreme violence, something he showed himself capable of when he preyed upon his fellow victims in the Land of Live Burial episode (last week). With: Robert Bly (KABIR) and secret SubGenius Primary Lore. from THE VAULT OF SLACK. The reading begins with our Cosmic Mother, the Octopus. Stan Freberg treats us to "John and Marcia." Spontaneous musical performances, maudlin reminiscences.

BURIED ALIVE after living in a kingdom where a married couple must perish together by custom if one of them dies, Sindbad manages to escape the charnel underground to which he is condemned at the death of his wife, after first escaping a repulsive fate at the hands of predatory cannibals. Still, despite the adventure's perils and horrors, the famous traveler returns wealthier than ever, cruel cannibals and deadly customs notwithstanding. WITH: poetry of Clark Ashton Smith and others. Bishop Joey, Jett, Puzzling Evidence and KrOB are also heard.

CONTINUES OUR DRAMATIC READING from the Thousand Nights and a Night. Attacked by hideous man-apes, Sindbad and some of his men become stranded after the apes capture their vessel. They encounter the monstrous, quasi-human, man-eating giant and some are devoured. "Our condition seemed to us so frightful (related Sindbad) that several of my companions thought it would be better to leap from the cliffs and perish in the waves at once rather than await so miserable an end, but I had a plan of escape which I now unfolded to them, and which they at once agreed to attempt.

"Listen, my brothers," I added. "You know that plenty of driftwood lies along the shore. Let us make several rafts and carry them to a suitable place. If our plot succeeds, we can wait patiently for the chance of some passing ship which would rescue us from this fatal island. If it fails, we must quickly take to our rafts; frail as they are, we have more chance of saving our lives with them than we have if we remain here."

All agreed with me, and we spent the day in building rafts, each capable of carrying three persons. At nightfall we returned to ...the... [abode of the]...giant, and one more of our number was sacrificed. But the time of our vengeance was at hand!

As soon as he had finished his horrible repast, he lay down to sleep as before, and when we heard him begin to snore, I, and nine of the boldest of my comrades rose softly and took each a spit which we made red-hot in the fire, and then, at a given signal, we plunged it with one accord into the giant's eye, completely blinding him. Uttering a terrible cry, he sprang to his feet, clutching in all directions to try to seize one of us, but we had all fled different ways as soon as the deed was done and thrown ourselves flat upon the ground in corners where he was not likely to touch us with his feet.

After a vain search, he fumbled about till he found the door and fled out of it howling frightfully. As for us, when he was gone, we made haste to leave the fatal castle and, stationing ourselves beside our rafts, we waited to see what would happen. Our idea was that if, when the sun rose, we saw nothing of the giant and no longer heard his howls, which still came faintly through the darkness, growing more and more distant, we should conclude that he was dead, and that we might safely stay upon the island and need not risk our lives upon the frail rafts.

But alas! morning light showed us our enemy approaching us, supported on either hand by two giants nearly as large and fearful as himself, while a crowd of others followed close upon their heels. Hesitating no longer, we clambered upon our rafts and rowed with all our might out to sea." Next week: The Fourth Voyage!