at the heart of :: the matriarchal :: matrix

   sh0n gRub   reporting  from his orbit about the  heart of the galaxy 

Take a quick glance  at   this    GREEN MAN   at the center of our Milky Way galaxy for a sec.  It’s the 2022 MeerKAT radio mosaic of the Milky Way’s center, processed by astronomer Ian Heywood and released by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). Only I colorized it green, see.  And I tilted it vertically.  Which really remains meaningless, meaning meaningful, if you see what I mean.  

     I mean, there's no direction in space, so I just wanted to emphasize the pregnant hierophant with a head like Alf holding it's arms out crossed and what appears to be a highlit blue egg in its uterus.   There's a lotta  wicker-wack lashing whipstrands of turbulent activity seemingly captured in this image.  Those are magnetized radio filaments, supernova remnants, stellar nurseries and portions of enormous radio bubbles extending above and below the galactic plane.  Pretty gnarly, huh?  Here's the image as I found it online: 

Image: I. Heywood/SARAO

   See now our super dimensional view of this region at the heart of our galaxy can be seen as the MeerKAT intended:  Red indicates strong radio emission; weaker emissions appear in grayscale.  The finished mosaic combines 20 observations, approximately 200 hours of telescope time and 70 terabytes of raw data.   Of course our Earth and Sun occupy the observational viewpoint behind this image.  That yellow eyelet indicates the Sagittarius A region containing Sagittarius A*, our galaxy’s supermassive black hole. 

     If you want to interpret that small orange yellow luminous patch as an eye, it would be staring right back at us here on Earth.   If you're wondering how much space this area takes, it's far less than 1% of the Milky Way—probably on the order of a few thousandths of one percent by projected area. The entire MeerKAT image covers only the central region of the galaxy—roughly 1,000–1,400 light-years in extent—while the Milky Way’s stellar disk is approximately 100,000 light-years across.   The whole rectangular field on display here  represents only around 0.01–0.03% of the galaxy’s projected disk area.

   The visualization is mapping radio brightness, not showing everything that exists there.  If you're wondering what size in relation to the yellow "eyelet fetus" kernel in the center the black hole within may be, it's far less than a single pixel within it, extremely miniscule by contrast as visualized on this scale.    Plasma and electromagnetic fields are indispensable to the observable universe. They govern stellar atmospheres, solar winds, jets, accretion disks, radiation, charged-particle acceleration and many features in this very MeerKAT image. Galactic magnetic fields extend across enormous distances, and the Sun’s heliosphere interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium.

   At the heart of the Milky Way, matter falls inward while radiation, magnetism and charged particles surge outward, contributing to a galactic circulation whose complete reach and significance remain imperfectly understood.  I've been researching this because this image has fascinated me more than anything since the Hubble revealed the Carina Nebula Panorama (which I wrote about in my first foray of experimental gravitational lensing poetry, on the Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction).  I wrote a short flash fiction sequel to that one, based on an expanded and higher resolution image of the Carina Nebula, which never ended up getting published on the Freezine, something I've been meaning to rectify ever since. 

    Now that this MeerKAT Man, or WoMan as the case may be, has been revealed, this Matriarchal Matrix incubating a motha- freakin'  BLACK HOLE at the center of our universe - for all we know, the True Womb of our Creation  - a Paradoxical Phenomenon which Births Itself - )?(as in the ancient Hebrew wisdom that signifies God being created along with the universe) after having emerged from the utter nonbeing of the void which we cannot possibly wrap our minds around or understand -  [except as  AIN SVP AVR {Ain Soph Aur =  the negatively existent One; the limitless Expansion; the illimitable Light} - of which only a dim conception may be formed] - now that we can SEE some of it - as radio emissions - we can close our eyes and let our minds connect the dots.  What do you think it all means? 

  Gaze deep into the heart of our galaxy:

Less than a pinprick of a pixel in the center of 

this yellow mass lies a super massive black hole 

Sagittarius A contains Sagittarius A* (and Sagittarius A* 

identifies the black hole w/its immediate radiating surrounds)

s|x sHades

by sh0n gRub 

 for  John Shirley 

of darkening black gathering intensity as it forms the cloud polluting the eye that scans over the horizon to see what comes next seven blades of circumstance arranged in a flowering scale dripping diamond mercury drops in a stitch work buffeting a gale driven between gulfs sparked in the albumen of cold dark outer space while eight shadows stagger across this permutation still taking place and all nine entwined molecular chains separate into three trinities combined while we emerge from the tenth portal to find one packed homestead open to infinity dividing in twain to face each other off in a battle of tempestuous love giving birth to the third elemental which time will double into six other shades of blackened darkness gathering

The Jigsaw Garden (Until We're All Blue)

  by Sh0n Grub  

   how dare   you take the one thing  

  they have left to play with 

 away from them with your 

sodden, rotten old justified self,

  die already. 

  just because you forgot the secret 

children have kept safe guarded

in their eyes for ever now 

  

      we can play inconspicuously

 in an innocent dance with death 

   until we're all blue in the face from

  failing to hold our breath   

doesn't mean the rest of us have 

  forgotten how to pirouette 

   with our shadows in time 

   or to court our own silhouettes

and how our relationships with

  the singularity and the apocalypse 

  as far as we can tell remain all 

  too personal to be believed 

  yet take one good long glance

   in our eyes and see if we don't 

  already, here and now caught up

  in the dead center crosshairs 

  of the world wide web, stare right

    back at you with full blown pupils

    caught up in skepticism and  

   belief in equal measure 

poised on the very threshold 

  of the expanding cosmos while

 you lie back in clueless abandon

  riding the waves of your status quo 

and we summon the courage to go

  ahead and believe any way, anyhow

 how dare you even acknowledge us 

  or our shadows slipping by in the gutter

  don't you know anything anymore 

 in this age of digital information 

  cramming your feeds until blind

 sided with your favorite subscriptions 

hush now don't you say goodbye 

   it would be a superfluous gesture

  considering we were never properly

 introduced in the first place 

  go on your way and we'll go on our own 

   it may appear we're all here in this

   together from where you perch on high

  but trust me this here's the smack dab center

of the Myriadverse, the wild spoked

  chrome hub of eternal recurrence

 intermittent superimposed and juxta-

 positioned origami blossoming 

 while we squat on the surface tension

   of this beckoning Jigsaw Garden 

  the weight of your convictions 

 sinks you far more rapidly into compost 

as we imagine in our hammocks 

   slung up above the water spiders  

  dreaming with the moccasins and lilies

  letting the rain clean the grime off our faces 

  

  

   

   

  illustrated by hand with magic 

markers on glossy photopaper    

 

   

   

Borderline Verging on the Threshold to Touch Upon the Immediate

 by your dedicated rogue correspondent Sh0n Grub (reporting for the Oscillating Oculus)

Tarzan the Mouse creeps up on a vine outside our window looking to get in the house

   Let's face it friends and sitters, dreamers and quitters, if any of y'all are getting an inkling of what I'm about to talk about, you're as stoked as I am for the incoming tidal shift of the innocuous sea change undermining the corruption calving icebergs of this desperado administration that's plowed through the old grand party like a mammoth in a China shop, wrecking more than just the economy and all our relations worldwide and setting a major tectonic paradigm shift I doubt even the Old Gods saw coming, and if they did they're left as clueless as the rest of us.   

 

    Despite my having foreseen the technological singularity advancing at geometrically enhanced stages of rapidity long ago (and written extensively about it enough to fill a 2-volume book) on the tails of absorbing 2009's Transcendent Man (about Ray Kurzweil) it's still monumentally shocking by how wide a margin I  (and I'd wager everyone else, frankly) missed the mark as to just how its manifestation would impact sending ripples through the fabric of our world (to the point its got everyone thinking there's something to the Mandela Effect and Hadron Collider theories having wrenched us into an alternate reality).  

    Let me simplify the truth of it for us.  As a matter of fact, there ain't nothin' supernatural or unusual about how we actually did get shifted from being on track to a better reality than we have today.  It's called the DNC throwing the good senator of Vermont under the bus ten years ago just so they could "fast track" their first female presidential candidate.  For reasons we'll never possibly know, Deborah Wasserman Schulz and even Hillary Herself didn't or couldn't SEE the simple, slightly-longer term strategy of prioritizing Sanders for a two-term election, so that it would pave the way surely for Hillary to successfully become president in 2024.  

   This remains a plain and simple explanation for where we're at today, folks.  Because obviously, the DNC decided the moment was hot and they had to strike right there and then, and democratic socialism be damned (as if they didn't understand the all too blue and American as apple pie benefits of what democratic socialism actually means).  Whatever their reasoning, it wasn't sound as near as I can tell, and look what it brought 'em (and the rest of us dumbfounded American dipshits).  DJT came roarin' in, seeing his window of opportunity to crawl into the White House and start fleecing the People every which way from Sunday. 

    Sure it's a tragedy, and if you ask me I can only sit back with a sigh and consider that we must've deserved this.  After all, it happened, and just like those prone to conspiracy-think are spinning in their heads faster than ever now, he did it again to become Forty-Seven.  Thought we were gonna stick a fork in it last year, well think again.  And now the real damage and corrosion to our democratic institutions has begun, in earnest.  As of this morning, we have none other than Todd Blanche narrowly voted in as US Attorney General.  How on Earth do you like them apples.  You thought Pam Bondi was bad, well we just got dipped in corrosive and unholy waters of Hell one inch deeper, enough to burn the downy hairs off our jewel sacs, each and every last one of us.  

    Like they say, "It's in God's hands now," and while there's plenty of evidence mounting each and every day that there Is No God in reality, it begs the question in my mind, then what unlikely forces of holy divinity stretched out across the spacetime continuum that account for this vast equilibrium suspending the starry night over our heads since the days we were born WILL balance out this shitty equation unfolding before our eyes?  Some call it Karma, I like to think of it as Luck, but with a catch.  And that's the fact that so-called "luck" ain't necessarily good; there's bad luck, too.  So it's like a mythical Buffalo Nickel getting tossed in the air, and we sit back and pray hope or wish it comes down "heads," assuming that's a good thing. 

   I'm a Taurus so I tend to think so.  I used to believe in Karma, what about you?  Yeah I know, don't bother answering, Karma's real sure, but what's reality?  That's the great unanswered question despite the fact we've been breathing it, seeing it, hearing it and tasting it, smellin' it and feeling it and living it since the days we were each born.  That's reality for us, ain't no question about it.  Only that we've been asking the wrong questions our whole lives.  So you know what I think?  It's about time we stop asking questions, and just be grateful for what we've been given, and what we do have, while we have it.  Time ain't runnin' out on nobody, we're the ones runnin' out.  We'll be runnin' out the door and soon enough, out of each other's lives, because we all know deep inside that the good ol' Grim Reaper may come for us on any day, at any time, for any reason whatsoever.  So maybe grab that old menu from the DEATH DINER and crack it open for a quick look-see inside.  The specials are on every day, and they’ve never been finer; the doors are open 24/7, and if you skim down the menu, you'll see all the countless forms it may take any single last one of us at any living second.  But here we are, all the same. 

      Kick back and read yourself a good book, or listen to an album you haven't pulled off your record shelf in a good long while.  Maybe go outside and...nevermind. I forgot it's likely 105 degrees Fahrenheit out there, regardless of where you are.  Stay indoors then, and be thankful you can still get yourself a glass of water.  At least for the time being, anyway. 

    

   

There he goes on down the vine outside our house the mighty Tarzan the Mouse

Don't Panic, It’s Just the Cosmos: Calibrating Our Reality Settings in an Age of Clickbait

  by your dedicated rogue correspondent Sh0n Grub (reporting for the Oscillating Oculus)

Einstein Crater region near the Moon's northwestern limb 

Source: Sergey Kuznetsov / Getty Images

    By now we've all been sideswiped against the calcified inner walls of this cavernous metropolis of hollow hallways so many times, it's a wonder we're still conscious.   Well I'm here with our latest update on the state of our natural world and existence, brought to you with the same unflinching and deadpan seriousness and stunning degree of impartial fact-checking you've come to appreciate over the years here at DUMZINE.  

    You know you can count on me to bring you the facts and nothing but the facts, and not only that, to preserve them with their proper sense of context.  It's a big world we all dwell upon. So big, in fact, that the reality of it exceeds all of our expectations, and that's something you can come to count on.  Let me give you an example.  

   About twelve hours ago, at approximately  12:35 AM Mountain Time, a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage brought an end to its 18-month orbital drift by striking the lunar surface near Einstein Crater at roughly 5,400 mph. Originally launched in January 2025 to boost two lunar landers into deep space, the four-ton, school-bus-sized piece of hardware exhausted its fuel and became an unguided satellite. Over the past year and a half, a complex push-and-pull of solar radiation pressure and gravitational perturbations slowly warped its orbit until its path finally intersected with the Moon, leaving behind a fresh, 15-meter crater, and adding one more tiny human mark to the quiet surface.

    Let's put this in perspective.  To put that spent booster into true physical context, consider the natural bombardments that have shaped the Moon for billions of years: while the Falcon 9 stage weighed roughly four metric tons and hit at a lethargic  5,400  mph, average space rocks strike the lunar crust at ten times that speed, with high-velocity comets reaching   speeds up to  160,000  mph! Even a modest iron meteoroid weighing a few dozen pounds delivers vastly more explosive kinetic energy than our four-ton piece of space junk.  At the absolute extreme end of cosmic violence sit titan-class impacts like the one that carved out the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Formed roughly four billion years ago by an asteroid estimated at over  100  kilometers  in diameter, that single collision excavated a colossal crater roughly  2,500  kilometers (1,550  miles) across and over 8 kilometers deep:  a scar wide enough to span half the continental United States. Next to all the multi-kilometer basins and millions of natural craters dotting the surface of our moon, a human booster carving out a temporary 15-meter pockmark doesn't even qualify as a drop in the ocean; it's a microscopic fraction of a droplet, not even worthy of measurement against the colossal and scarred satellite which we take for granted as the moon. 

   Look, I'm trying to tell y'all something, here.  Do you remember back in 2018, when that volcano went off in Hawaii?  Kīlauea erupted along the Lower East Rift Zone on Hawaii’s Big Island, sending relentless rivers of lava surging down into the Puna District near the coast. Between May and August, the flows swallowed entire neighborhoods—demolishing 716 homes, displacing thousands of people, and completely reshaping the shoreline as molten rock poured straight into Kapoho Bay. It served as a stark, violent reminder of what real geological muscle actually looks like when the Earth decides to reshape itself.  Except for one thing: despite the extent of the damage, and in no way, shape or form do I intend to diminish that, it must be understood in its proper context and scale.  Online articles almost always work as "power presentations," invariably showing a map of the Big Island, and a large "X" or "O" to mark the spot, a circle on the map designating where the volcano is located.  And always, these graphics drastically exaggerate the true proportions into something that gets translated in our heads into hundreds of thousands of times greater than it really is.  Because if we were to have taken the trouble to identify the square miles size of the area around the volcano itself, including the neighboring homes that were devastated, we would find it to be barely a pixel on the extreme edge of the map of the island.  

    Let's face it.  It's time for us reasoning and reasonable human beings subject to the whims of the internet to adjust our "reality knobs" to calibrate with the actual scale of places and events in our lives.  And the truth remains.  We not only dwell in cities that are bigger,  in counties that are much larger than we'd typically imagine; in states whose dimensions exceed our ordinary expectations, but comparatively speaking, to states such as Texas, and then Alaska which happens to be more than twice its size, we human beings dwell on a planet so much vaster and larger than we're ordinarily capable of appreciating, well it goes without saying that our moon itself is so much farther away and larger than we really know, and that's just the start of it.  

   The distances between our planet and Venus, Mercury, and the Sun; and the distance between us and Mars, and the asteroid belt, and Jupiter, not to mention the remaining three gas giants, all the way out to Neptune, just happens to be on a scale so much greater than we are normally wont to consider, that if we were to be exposed to the actual ratios and distances, it would more than stagger our minds, it would leave us stunned bordering on miscomprehension, and that's not even leaving our solar system yet.  

   My point remains sharp and focused, as lucid as a cricket hopping outside in your yard, as serrated as a blade of grass zoomed in upon in all its intricate and glorious organic machination.  We exist in a world whose intricacy and  size  so outstrips our everyday, normal default setting of perception that I want you all to consider what the ramifications of this may be.  It's simple, really.   Howard Phillips Lovecraft famously wrote, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."  

   Well I have a somewhat extraordinary inverse view to that outlook.  For me, the fantastical and bordering on supernatural size and complexity of the cosmos begs a different reaction.  It becomes the ultimate source of reassurance.  Because we were all born into this life however many years of age we each happen to be.  For me, it's bordering on sixty years.  Yet here I still am, wondering at the vast complexity and miraculous nature of our existence.  You see, don't you, as I do, that the absurdly enormous distances between our planets and Sun and neighboring stars in our galaxy are all linked together by electromagnetic forces we simply have barely even the slightest clue about, don't you?  There's a certain amount of scientific faith one may become vested in, considering the totality of that scale. 

   And I'm here to tell you, breathe in . . .  breathe out . . . everything we read online  (and I do mean everything without exception) regarding world events and natural calamities gets amped up and blown out of proportion so radically off base from the true and actual context in reality that we are more often than not click-baited into feeling inordinately more anxiety and discomfort than might be allocated for us, when you stop and think about it for a few sobering moments.  This has been your daily announcement from DUMZINE to get us all to breathe a little easier and try not to succumb to the disproportional and sensationalist news bait articles vying for our attention.  Instead, sit back and relax and try to enjoy your time here, if even for an hour or two.  If we train our minds to stay on track with this reality, we might even enjoy a perpetual feeling of peacefulness and relaxation, knowing that the miracle of our existence remains something we'll never fully understand, so why not let it all go and enjoy the ride? 

   

   

Update on a State of Mind

 by your dedicated rogue correspondent Sh0n Grub (reporting for the Oscillating Oculus)

hand-drawn illustration by yours truly,  Sh0n Grub 

  Well here we are steeped so deeply into the unfolding technological singularity as to effectively have rendered all but the most tenacious of us iconoclastic individuals haplessly dumbfounded and staring at the event horizon through the haze for the hidden flock cameras and ubiquitous surveillance grids virtually and on the verge of independent devastation, well not I, let me assure y'all however ineffectually I may, because although stripped of my stumbled-upon, happy go lucky career having found myself dog paddling without a chain for the past nine months, feeling as if I'm about to be borne again as a stillbirth into the new paradigm of the machine, luckily for me (and my stalwart readers out there, you know who you are as well as I do) I yet retain that paradoxical nature of the beast, the ability to keep my nose above the waterline even as the global floodlines rise, billion dollar industry AI corporations such as Anthropic buy up millions of used and discarded books in bulk from wholesalers, only to cut off their bindings and strip their spines with hydraulic machinery to scan the printed pages, and then pulp the remains for recycling into compost to feed their AI data algorithms and justify the production of countless data centers planned for the Down-winder desert territories to establish Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses, and of course the current administration has targeted the parched and toxic valley alongside the Wasatch Mountain range in Utah as the perfect location, and with utilizing a devious leverage through our sycophantic governor Spencer Cox, always willing to sell out not just the land itself but our people along with it to the overtly corrupt ministrations of our newly overhauled and most incompetent governing body since our country's inception, all in mutual allegiance to the almighty dollar in the name of an (un)holy war against the nefarious adversaries of the mind, those wicked middle easterners with their patently transparent so-called "nuclear capacity and intent to destroy" as we surreptitiously sail on over the line melted in the sand like the pre-ghostly echo of a Lost Ship already stranded far beyond the capacity to return into the Dead Sea of Souls hell bent on leaving behind their mutual revenge served cold in exchange for a new deal to serve it up Steaming Hot on a platter of Oblivion.   

   How's your day going so far?  I hope all remains well with you and your world, and see there's the crux of the biscuit, isn't it?  The world's really an amalgamation of a multitude of worlds, infesting and pervading, spreading through and swarming over with hope and loss and tragic beauty spiked with sudden deaths interlaced in a heaving tapestry of primal, burgeoning births and mass executions while entire colonies of dispossessed humans flee their wartorn former homes in search of neighborly harbors that might take them in.  Meanwhile, our own gifted statue of bigotry remains (for now) standing at the foothold of Manhattan Island (future private prison from which none may escape) holding aloft her war torn Torch of faithless uncertainty, her inscription suffering from delamination and effacement, our own self-inflicted Damnation Memoriae if you will, and even if you won't, I'm afraid that's all she wrote. 

    I feel my duty as a diligent reporter of the facts, in trying to uncover the hottest story of our times, lingers across the viewscreen of my mind in an alluring manner, as if displayed by the magic of twenty-four frames per second, flickering against the silver screen of my innermost dreams with a haunting suggestion, a beckoning call if you will, not unlike the Sirens of old, but with an inverse significance, as if this song summons my attention toward an escape route, through a labyrinth of strange coral formations uprising from this sea of madness we all find ourselves in, to lead us through a mysterious delta which harbors a passage to one of those electrically charged worlds we're all tangled up inside, which if only we could draw a bead on, and calibrate our own body's electromagnetic polarity with, would lock us into it, and draw us slowly in deeper, onward and into its otherwise impenetrable confines, until we might find ourselves gradually absolved from the hectic nightmare of the technopolis gathering strength as it mutates into it's multifaceted and malignant form.  

    Where may such hidden passages as that, typically occluded from us, possibly remain hidden?  Or should the question be when might such a portal present itself to each of us?  My investigative instinct tells me it's a matter of circumstances and opportunities.  We must each keep our senses honed sharp, our eyes and ears out for them, as they might occur and present themselves at virtually any time of day or night, and at any place we might happen to stumble upon, throughout our various excursions in this craven metropolis that has been apparently damned with the expanding virus of fear.  The very thing our 32nd president warned us about ninety-three years ago.  

    So remember one thing, if you can summon the willfulness to do so.  Do not succumb to the fear! Stay brave, stay true, to yourself and your loved ones.  Stay alert for whatever opportunities might come your way.  Somewhere along the line ahead of us, there must be a remarkable pathway about to unfold, analogous to a sort of parting of the Red Sea, a miraculous moment shining with rainbow ferocity, with unsettling mists refracting impossibly, which grabs your attention and demands you react. 

    It's up to us, the few and far between, the lost and struggling loners, the disillusioned and devastated, the wrecked and broken, the sullen and hopeless, whose brightness may have been dashed out of our eyes, whose former certitude or optimism may have been nearly eroded away, to cast aside our blinders and addictions to the world wide web of lies, to put down our smart phones for just a few moments and reclaim our right to be wise, to shut off the noise being piped from online into our collective hive mind. To awaken to the recurrent possibilities of the moment, and  recapture the essence that has kept us alive.

     Follow me for more tips and tricks in surviving the oncoming zombie holocaust, and maybe we'll see you on the other side of this divide.  

Keep an eye out for more reports

from DUMZINE and

The Oscillating Oculus 

The Monster on the Shield (and Other Atrocities)

by sh0n grub, roving reporter for the Oscillating Oculus 

In the coruscating madness of the frog reaper's nest 

Where a painter and artist meet in headflung distress

From the turbulence of shadows, may an avatar commence

In a blood initiation ritual with significant success.

How the mere imposition of a woven mandala's song

May interpolate an inner world of interconnectivity, 

While evoking a scene mirrored in a labyrinth of dreams 

To cultivate a solution that may come across wrong.

Welcome to DUMZINE.  It's been awhile since I posted anything.

There's been a lot going on at  GRUB CENTRAL which is now 

more or less known as TRIVERSE LABORATORIES and consists

of no longer the mighty Greg Grub + Shaun Grub =  THE GRUB BROS 

but rather, has morphed into Shaun Grub + Zane Grub = ZUNA ASHEN.

We are working almost daily on cultivating, which is to say writing out

the long, intricate details outlining the bedrock of a new shared universe

that becomes superimposed on the history of reality and simultaneously 

functions as the setting of our pulp science fantasy serials to be published

some day in the near future by our own imprint 𝕻𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖒𝖆 𝕻𝖗𝖊𝖘𝖘 

destined to become the flourishing nexus of fantastical writings 

to usher in our latest era of post boomer generational aspiration 

in the arts and literary scene which includes poetry, drama and action

sex, blood and graphics on a scale that would make our colleagues blush 

Nevermind the gold rush get in on the action while you can grab a slice

of the pie while the music's winding down and a seat at the table 

before the next high tide sweeps in to drown the uncertain and paralyzed. 

(Paradigm shifts like the one we're all going through at the moment 

Signal more wild adventures ever yet to come and at the least

An ever ending home base moving in by which to forget about the past.)

   I'm making slow progress on my "Big Book of Twisted Fairy Tales", otherwise to be titled something more like The Monster on the Shield & Other Atrocities, but I'm still compiling tales, so there could be another title for it yet. 

 While developing the Blog of the Triverse, maintained since its outset largely with

entries by Zuna Ashen, have just reached one hundred posts!

  (My son and I are also expanding the various sublevels  of our mythos in time  known as the Triverse (an analog of our universe) used to illustrate the somewhat  magical nature of existence.)  

Now as we're caught in the crossfire of this manifolding lotus region 

Of the perpetual crucifixion of energy and matter on the crossbar 

representative of the timespace continuum we are eased through 

the molecular microtonal aether drift that eases our imprinted characteristics

onto the pages of life being turned at such a slow pace we often come to think:

No one's reading this Odyssey when in fact the legion of the as-yet-unformed

Have it preordered long before the first zygote and are already subscribed to it

For their lives-to-come, and before long, headflung from the heels of our giant shoulders.

While the greatest living trees subsume into monolithic buttes at such a pace

We are unable to make the connection (as their long dropped fruit) whose seedling eyes Open one after another in an unzipped revelation 

of reflecting the stars 

A haunting eulogy to fall like the dust of silenced music echoed in the void 

The so-called Monster on the Shield (Leo's painting commissioned by his father) became as true as any depiction of our reflection. For reasons cultivated far too long within the strain of culture as it gains fruition.  Upon the tail end of creation's ultimate spawning, a circumscription if you will. 

Of all that came before, reiterated through a new compound lens and horn. 

Where the herald of light may continue to flare out into the symphonic composition.  Unraveling through disintegration into new and subsequent movements. 

If you're feeling confused, let's make no mistake about it.  Our legion of readers are mostly the unborn. The yet to be borne. Into this world I've come to understand as the Prime dominion Earth. Which is to say it's latest incarnation.  The only one in Time. 

The curse of not achieving readership success until after we're dead. That's just the way of all life, not merely limited to the plight of gifted artist's and poets.

It's how creation itself manifests across time, necessarily in long, drawn out movements that gradually form across the interconnection of molecular masses making progress through aeons like glacial mountains too colossal for us to behold.  There, I've said too much. 

If you've read this far and are still alive, thanks for subscribing to DUMZINE. 

brought to you
by Shon Grub

rhimes & crymes
of a Nursery
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& Told Quite
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WORD Begun in June fourteen years ago & Continued in November, 2015, DUMZINE

presents an exclusive 13-part serialization of the epic poem

SAGA OF THE BLOODSUCKING FIENDS

by Sh0n Grub

~now back to yr regulrly scheduled 2025~  

Ah, ah, ah ah . . . . staying alive read this short story free of charge 

 EMPTY BOTTLES

by  John Shirley 

Only on the FREEZINE of

Fantasy and Science 

FICTION 

  

Shiro the hero

by roving reporter Sh0n Grub 

Hyphae perform a variety of functions in fungi. They contain the cytoplasm or cell sap, including the nuclei containing genetic material. Hyphae absorb nutrients from the environment and transport them to other parts of the thallus (fungus body).

Haustoria: In botany, this may refer to a cotyledon, or to the root of a parasitic plant (such as the broomrape family or mistletoe) that penetrates the host's tissue and draws nutrients from it. In mycology, it refers to the appendage or portion of a parasitic fungus (the hyphal tip), which performs a similar function.   In the singular it is Haustorium: a structure that grows into or around another structure to absorb water or nutrients.

In plant life it's referred to as the Cotyledon: A cotyledon (/ˌkɒtɪˈliːdən/; "seed leaf" from Latin cotyledon,[1] from Greek: κοτυληδών kotylēdōn, gen.: κοτυληδόνος kotylēdonos, from κοτύλη kotýlē "cup, bowl") is a significant part of the embryo within the seed of a plant, and is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "The primary leaf in the embryo of the higher plants (Phanerogams); the seed-leaf. 

Phanerogams (taxon Phanerogamae) or phaenogams (taxon Phaenogamae), comprise those plants that produce seeds.  They are more commonly known as Spermatophyte. 

They are a subset of the embryophytes or land plants--the most familiar group of green plants that form vegetation on earth.

Mycelium is the vegetative part of a fungus or fungus-like bacterial colony, consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. The mass of hyphae is sometimes called shiro, especially within the fairy ring fungi. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates.

A sclerotium is a compact mass of hardened fungal mycelium containing food reserves.  The plural is sclerotia. It is the armor to help preserve the food in environmental extremes. 

Mycelium is vital in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems for their role in the decomposition of plant material.  Bioremediation and mycofiltration are two examples of utilizing fungus to detoxify the environment. 

Rusted gates and Polished skies

by  Sh0n Grub 

 I feel as if a fever dream has woken me up inside. 

I know that things aren’t what they seem so why 

does it hurt my pride when people ask me what I 

think about how things are today I don’t know 

how to respond or even know what to say.

All the thoughts I used to have are going down 

the drain. It seems like there has been someone 

who’s hacked into my brain. I don’t know what’s

 real anymore because I’ve been online for so damn 

long the truth’s now hard to find.

What used to seem to be so right now I’m told 

is wrong by people that won’t agree with me or 

sing my own song. I have no choice, but to be left

 alone with my own private thoughts

I try to stay perpendicular to the truth that every

one else has bought.  I close my eyes and think of 

times that have long past us by. Their vivid impressions 

coalesce before me in the sky.  One consolation that I get 

when I open my bedroom window are the songbirds singing 

to themselves, I try to let their message flow through my mind 

as I unwind and think of days gone past.  I hang onto these 

memories, hoping they will last.  I don’t know how much time 

I have left in this old life. All I know is I love my boy and my 

one and only wife. For them I would do anything no matter 

what the cost. In their hearts I hope to find myself getting lost. 

Far ago and Lost now Left behind Like roadkill

by Sh0n Grub

 I’ve never felt so lonely in a world this overcrowded it seems that my one and only hope won’t be heard even if I shouted it from the rooftops for the world to hear, but the wind just carries it away. My opinions do not matter in the world of today. 

 This leads me to feel a sorrow that I cannot quite explain and wonder if I’m suffering from damage to my brain visions I once held that were so pure and true are beginning to be dispelled by everyone, including you. 

 I now feel so lost and alone I can’t begin to express it in the darkness of my mind where a light  once was shown to lead the way forward, there’s only a dimming beam nowadays, preventing me from moving toward the goals that I once wanted to achieve. 

 I no longer see the reason and I’m finding it much harder to believe there’s anything worthwhile but treason.  The price of eggs and gasoline are subjects of discussion and I could care less about their dream of becoming Russian.  

 Friends that used to love me now seem to view me with suspicion, if not mockery and hatred pouring with derision. I suppose one idle glance sent their way colored by the wrong lighting sent them scurrying away from the wrongs I thought we were all righting.  Now I’m just left gutted on the side of a dirt road to be crushed beneath the passing tires and flattened like a toad. 

  

 

re:uptake up:date

 by  your weird roving reporter Sh0n Grub

   This is a reuptake update from your friendly lost reporter shon grub here on a quick recap for the subscribers of dumzine.  It all weaves through our predecessor MINDBENDER MAGAZINE which ran its course of nearly three decades with the contributions of the grub bros. shaun and greg (RIP) grub and shaun's actual blood brother tim grub aka sleepy timmy  (back in the day when we ran Station 3 in Dark City -- the evil analog to boston).  

 

    The Grub Bros apartment in Boston down at the bottom of Beacon Hill served as a nexus for the adventures we had surviving the constant persecution of black helicopters that had been tracking us halfway across the nation, from W. Memphis, when Greg was chasing his art degree at their university.  I recall those days because when I reached his small air-conditioned apartment, I have a vivid memory of him squatting on the floor, knees akimbo, wearing his hand painted old-school black batman logo tank-top, with his wicked blonde spiked mullet hawk and deranged yet beguiling grin (that resembled the joker, somewhat) which made for the sort of extreme contrasts he became known for (Batman/Joker hybrid, in this case) over the course of our brilliant and tumultuous lives.  

    In Honduras, Greg and I put out The Commie Pinko, a Xeroxed pamphlet we typed up on my father's IBM Selectric, which was in the main office of his factory at POLCO, in El Hatillo, Honduras.  My dear ol' dad let us drive his Toyota diesel pickup truck from our house (nestled among the pines by a cliff overlooking the glittering city of Tegucigalpa) over to the factory which was maybe two miles down the winding dirt road.  We were also putting out MINDBENDER MAGAZINE of course, and I had already put out The Black Rose magazine at Joe T. Robinson high school back in Little Rock, which I don't think ever saw its second issue. Dumzine is here to rectify all that went wrong and which unraveled over those mad, bitter times of joyous rollicking along the momentous wavecrest of our developing youth. 

   The Grub Bros carved out our own reality, The Dream we wore proud as  a visor that shielded the Sun from blinding us. We were ready to step through any portal into whatever fantastical new world might await us on the other side.  We figured out we could create our own reality and so we did for many years, but I digress.   Dumzine wants to reassure you, that there are so many things going on currently  with its imprint (Plasma Press) that for now, as Executor of the Plasma Press estate, I can only describe our current situation as roughly the equivalent of grinding gears in 4-wheel drive to navigate out of a minor ditch off road.  (to be cont.) 

    

   

Tremor Double Vision

  by Sh0n Grub, roving reporter for the Oscillating Oculus 

We're in those times now.   Seismographs are picking up on a lot of activity across the board. We're in a shifting phase of turbulence while we change gears. We may have to bail out of the car. Whatever metaphor floats your boat. Like peter gabriel said, here comes the flood.  

    It's been seven years since greg grub hitched a ride to the other side. 

  In my head I can see how plasma press could all fall into place publishing X1 Triverse serials as well as the exploits of Professor Ferocity and the Phenomenal Five, and then filling in the blanks with android characters from the AI TITANS rogue gallery.  

    Dumzine's feeling the aftershocks, now.  That was a Grub life-extinction level event.  Still thinking of you my Grub brother.   Warrior in arms.  Still trying to hash up some plans amid the ruins.   Getting there slowly but surely

Experimental fruition dumzine bar

by  roving reporter  Sh0n Grub  

by proxy of the Oscillating Oculus bringing you the down-to-the-street-level human interest stories you crave.  

  All you have to do is speak into the mic and this will upload. You can save it as a draft or publish it. It really wouldn’t even matter..  Because if you publish it, then you can always just go back and fix it..  But if you wanna be immaculate, you can actually keep it a draft until it’s perfect.

   These are matters of personal choice when you embark upon your creative writing project.  By agreeing to write with Plasma Press, you agree to have your amazing stories published in an old school manner [chapter book] where only the covers have fantastic color illustrations conjured by participants at the initial core level. Our synthographers are top-notch, Plasma Press has recruited two of them so far, with possibilities of expanding the ranks once expected sales goals are met. 

     Plasma Press is dedicated to presenting high quality fiction that goes beyond pulp science fantasy into a quantum realm transcending existence itself.  Be prepared to experience a series of books made available as low-priced hardcovers, perfectbound paperbacks, eBooks & audio books - the latter category having the largest demographic of the aforementioned.  

    As senior executor of Plasma Press, I guarantee we will be seeing some extravagant series cross-bonding with the universal principles in operation behind the multiverse and everything that entails. The subPrime dominions, in an echoing trail behind us, within the hyperdimensional refractory period associated with our solar portal system established by Sagittarius A* and the mysterious forces at work behind the quasar within immediate proximity, 

 to be cont.

      

More integral details

to come ...

Interpretive services

 Recourses may be offered for the misunderstanding people have with a variety of technological fields spread out before us like a tarot deck in a casino where the gambling is mandatory, there’s no guarantee that a sponsor will comply, given the unpredictable state of the weather, nowadays. 

  Sound familiar   

 - it shouldn’t— by all that’s unfair and fearsome!

Hook in w/yr  cyber-grapplin’ hooks— 

—swing onnem vines, know’m say’n

I heard word of a new publishing imprint that’s cooking up somethin colossal  -  

 -for those initial few who step onboard  — I heard whispers of it being by invitation or something. 

 I Sh0n Grub shall keep surviving subscribers of DUMZINE updated. 

🔜

Dumzine tries new things

 I tap the mic icon, and it lights up into a white circle in the lower left of my smartphone screen. I speak the afore written sentence. 16 words are generated.  This is blog by dictation.   That’s right it’s your roving reporter Shon Grub here on assignment for the Oscillatong Oculus. Testing test testing. Hit done. Now hit the iron square with the paper airplane icon arrowing to the right.  Publish

Substack Wack a Mole

 

by Shaun Grub 

  Opened my Substack and saw I was following Roger Waters. I like it's simple threadlike, elegant subdirectory minimalist design. So I think I'll begin spiraling down the rabbit hole there.  I began a note on one of my blogs that I intend to copy paste into Substack.  The idea remains or should I say the question begs to be asked, will my Substack have any premidated order or design, limitations imposted etc., and the answer is a resounding yes, this must be constructed with premeditated thought. 

   So my first one is sort of an impromptu, introductory preamble I already began working on, tracing the history of my involvement with reading and writing. I'm still on X despite all my liberal antifa peers cancelling, deleting, deactivating, or whatever they're really doing lies beyond anyone's guess when you get right down to it (and I do).  As we must. Really, I'm tired of knowing we live in a world where it seems there's no one to trust. That's a gas lit fear if I ever saw one.  Let's get past our mass brain washing, and get dressed.  That's what people do after they wake up to reality and ready to face another day. 

   Look, I know exactly what I'm trying to say.  But not precisely what I'm talking about. Bear with me as I bring you the latest newsworthy craze and post-glitch singularity fad. Remember its all concentrated through the latticework of viewpoints the webbing of crystal pyramid lenses focus into iconographic bullet points, just like the various gravitational displacement signatures of each respective celestial body such as the Earth. We've necessarily woven the pretexts of all the various integral myths which stem from our collective well of human knowledge. 

          Speaking of roger waters david gilmour brian eno nick cave thom yorke I'm impartial to them all and in fact admire all five of their music and even like to pretend they're cool dudes, by whatever metric someone reading this might want to fill in the blank with. Here at dumzine we don't pretend that it'll ever end or that it could be mended even if we pretended to want it that way, we here at dumzine are a colony of interrelating micro-extraterrestrials swarming amid the wide open infusoria hermetically sealed and contained deep within the underlayers of our skin.

     We here at dumzine like to pretend all sorts of things, but we don't like to make believe we are ants because the societal structure as it exists is way too Borg-like in its dimensional execution, I do not hesitate when I state that I do not recommend this for human social systems largely due to the integral differentiation between humans and ants being on an order of altogether different species. 

    If the language of biological evolution as expressed through the constant perpetuation of dna flowering and blooming into all the surprising intricacy of its interwoven manifestation here on our native planet Terra under this lone young rogue red dwarf star we know almost next to nothing about, well we here at Dumzine are johnny on the spot ready to report at a moment's notice live from Salt Lake City it's lonely ol' me, DJ Thorn Grub of House Nova and the lost Flying Fox tribe, twin survivor along w/his brother Tim Grub, together who managed to escape both the long extended shadow of the reaching Balrog's tail, but ducked at the final instant to avoid the sudden garotte, stooped in stealth behind the shadow of a tree to let crucial moments marked by a rapid heartbeat go by.  

       Dumzine will report a mishmash of made up stuff mixed up with real true shit, because dumzine be keepin' it real, y'all.  Oh yeah, and I'm sorry for the infrequency of posts here at dumzine.  We will try to begin caring about that. We'd like to play some music but it's funner over here IRL.   So I hope all four of our followers are doing great.  Without you,  this cyber aperiodical would be even dumber.  You four are like the light bulbs that make this place shine.  and flicker.   I need to end this with a ridiculous piece of ai art. 

follow the preliminary mapping of the extensive underground network of subdominion worlds crossing over from the subPrime ("The World That Could Have Been") dominion to our own Prime dominion which intersect with the continuing adventures of Professor Ferocity and his Phenomenal Five, banded together as an agency committed to solving the most perplexing and baffling cases in the history of the paranormal and strange.  

Titans Foundation by Zuna Ashen remains the only blog of the Triverse to be found on the world wide web. It's location has only been known to two people known as secret agents, their identities are well protected under a hyperbolic mantle of syntherian-spun images whose complete decryption takes exactly the same amount of time for them to escape from one location to the next undetected. Stay tuned to this same rat bat channel my four devotees of dumzine. It all ties together in the end. 

P.S.

Follow me on Substack where I will begin the next phase of my literary evolution.  Wherein I take strands of the golden age, new wave, post-Weird, cyber punk, slip stream and experimental posthuman glitch prose poetics to another level nowhere near to being beyond human comprehension, but rather training the mind to be better prepared for it as we accelerate toward its yawning series of serrated maws at an astonishing breakneck pace.  Strap in and enjoy the ride because its called the technological singularity and you and me are starring in it.   

   

in time

 by  roving reporter   shaun grub 

  dumzine's not about anything in particular, so it gets to cover a little about everything. our staff remembers the days we used to buy poetry books for .10cents a pound, I fondly recall the campus bookstore cashier loading up a whole stack of the ted hughes book the crow on the scale and charged me a buck and some change for a tidy pile of 'em, this would've been back in the mid-80's, when I began my sophomore year in college pursuing a degree in creative writing at arkansas tech located snug in the ozark mountains in russellville, a quaint little town caught under the splendorous web of radioactive sunsets. nevermind the times we spent in total darkness in the heart of eden fall's hollow egg cavern sanctuary, perhaps the only cathedral I've been in. 

    dumzine reporter shaun grub here, sent forward in time forty-two years to cover the state of the dream in the mind of the two very weird heroes, shaun and greg grub. theirs is a legacy with a history so labyrinthine and mind-meltingly complicated with its entanglement not just at the quantum level of the universe but enmeshed within a diabolical scheme as if entangled in the twisting strands of a jacob's ladder trap, it would arrest the majority of us into a state of paralyzed apprehension or send some fresher and more pliable minds into spastic reactions of pleasant panic bordering on synaptic lubrication.  y'all can go pluck yourselves right about now, just pluck yourselves out of the loosely strewn gardens you managed to get yourselves planted into for time's sake, or am I the only one that allowed this to happen to me?  speaking of, here in the year 2024 there's a series on a streaming service reinventing time bandits, and its really quite charming to say the least. I watched along with my wife and son a show with a unique take on shape-shifters called me.  we all really adored the six seasons long young sheldon, and are eagerly awaiting season seven to arrive to our channel. 

     our current favorite show, that is my wife and son and I, is without a doubt a series of unfortunate events, reprising the books with immaculate, if sometimes getting carried away representations of most of the events in the books, or so I've been told by someone who appeared suspiciously to know, now I feel as if I've been lowered on a rope into a tornado hole, and landed on another plane, a prairie leading towards a mountain range and up into a valley 4,600 feet above sea level, nestled along a drying out lake of salt beginning to shed aluminum and other compounds of dust into the air to be mixed with and settle into the periodic inversions awaiting in the future since the pandemic momentarily hit the reset as it did with pollution worldwide.  

     the things happening post-pandemic embedded within their russian nesting dolls of different sets of context, combined in a world-wide stirred phenomenon that can be seen as a conflagration, emblazoned within a pixel, forged into a mustard seed that will grow into the flaming tree that will produce  the double-edged mercurial sword running through the sap coursing in the veins of the forest.  blinkerbeasts we've been called, because we can blink through time at episodic intervals, which creates the eerie effect of teleportation for reasons of complex planetary orbital and revolutionary advancement factors.  in the grub tribe, shapeshifting becomes an integral skill when moving through the underbrush caught outside in the after hours with the moon low in the sky scudding after you.  reporting back from another ripped interval. it occurs to me at exactly the same time it occurs to you, just as its always been doing for everyone since the beginning it seems, only we've already proven there hasn't been a start able to be established since the limits of our vision into the rear view mirror diminish before the uncanny valley can open its eye. when the whole universe remains an eye the metaphor cannot be lost. all I'm saying is we better pay attention at the wheel because not only were we not even at it actually, but the real wheel's been left unattended, I mean how many of us here don't already know this, raise your hands so I can get a count of how many of you are still being driven along without even having one single finger of yours on the wheel.  see the grub bros knew this because they shared the secret in silence.  I suppose we were best friends because we both eliminated the impossible and whatever lay around us, wherever we happened to be, was the truth, because it was all that remained.  we had a knack of knowing we were each thinking the same thing, because it was only obvious to us.  we led people to believe we could read each other's minds so well that we began to believe it ourselves.  and why shouldn't we. 

        we create our own reality, you believe what you want, but our lives were not a fantasy, despite being in full blown possession of the dream, I guess you could call it possessed by a certain filthy sort of breed of angel and demon, a mongrel anamorphication of sorts, depending from which angle you look at it. in time we all come to believe something or other. in time we all come to be leaving.  we have no idea who's turn will be next. 

      in time I will be leaving, too; before or after you.  I repeat this because it has yet to become all too clear. until another soul mate gets reaped from our garden by the grim sickle, we can't even have a clue. that's because television has done so much for me and you. don't forget that was in a sense just one of the phases of the genesis of our mass hypnosis. primed by radio signal decay imbuing the slightest charge in what creation assumed was a dead battery.

     so the heart of the dragon lay dreaming yet, squandered in the hidden chaparral of the carbonales valley. I know this to be a fact, since I was born there, in the exact center of the sixties, and lived my first eleven years as a child in the midst of the eye of a storm of such proportions I would not learn about the details and context for thirty seven years. now this year 2024 is the second set of nineteen-year spans since the annular revolution of the infinite dragon distended the rings of its mind, until we were caught up in the middle of it all, staring at the constellations from the frozen ice of chalk pond in abject fascination by our lonely little ski chalet we rented deep in the woods behind arkham. my father was born in marblehead, do the math. 

         don't talk to me about asylums and mayhem. I walked through the fire until my face burned to ash and got licked up by the wind.  I rode my bike bareskulled without slowing straight through all the downtown boston intersections passing right through red lights even while jam-packed rows of automobile traffic going 30mph passed along sliding leftward on  commonwealth avenue like a river of cold and glistening molten steel while I pedaled my 21-speed racing bike with curved back handrails using a keen eye for steady timing to match the velocity crossing through to intersect with the moving strip of head- and tail-lights knowing by instinct I could thread between the red and white to make it to the other side, and I always did without altering the course or speed of my easygoing ride. Centaurcycles we were, prowling the late night streets of boston, following curved sidewalks lit by random lamp lights, hardly a human soul in sight, maybe the wind blowing scraps of trash and wrappers across the concrete walks, we were as free as a couple of prehistoric birds soaring the bluest of skies. in a sense, we worshipped the avian race. the world sent omens our way in the shape of a wide variety of raptors and assorted other birds.  these sentinels remain in our time and are still there not just in our mind but more to the point our mind remains in there. think of it as a big panoramic diorama menagerie cornucopia. 

    the black box canyon where our buried dream lies hidden in a cache of rock. the striations in the mineral landscape are the fossilized remains of the great dragon's wingtip. we always knew the northernmost territories of the aztec kingdom extended to the wasatch mountain range. it’s patently obvious many stalwart a tracker from any number of indigenous tribes from south and central america would've likely wandered in awe and wonder until they discovered this jewel of the inland sea. more than bright mythic dreams leave golden flares in the traces of our memory. for within the packed folds glinting mica sparkles amid the rings of a long petrified tree.  that's where you'll find the remains of our dream.  in the undulating cloudscape being siphoned through the sky. the harrowing shape of our wildest imagination whipped into stately grace and passing with such eloquent consistency, reminding one of the very passage of time and the slowly arcing mass of constellations which you realize is actually the velocity of the planet turning, their counter spinning parallax achieving megahertz perfection. 

      blossoming up and open through our eyes.  we knew how to finish each other's sentences just for fun. we innocently gaslighted a jock into believing his shadow was chasing him.  much worse nightmares lay waiting for us in the darkness ahead.  we eagerly ducked into the shadows of the cloud forests deep within honduras. little did we know what the spores we breathed in while exploring the mutant rainforest would do to us in a few short years. without even knowing it, we became living revenants sent like sentient capillaries from a remote colony of the vorrh into the urban landscape we came to fear as dark city.  those were the days and at least I can say for myself they haven't ended.  not one of my friends in this life were ever pretended. the joke can only be on the last one of us standing because the laughter of the wind sounds like the cold yawning void of outer space having leaked through the planck cracks of this reality, see what I mean. you're damn straight this is america.  

      it means we are here.