You may be aware that Stephen King suffered near-fatal injuries in 1999 after being struck by a car whose driver had become distracted by the driver’s dog.
You may also know that Stephen King’s Dark Tower series involves a fair amount of dimension-hopping at various points.
If you’re not a reader of Stephen King’s work, but you’re aware of the memes about his stuff, you may even know that, in the course of the aforementioned dimension-hopping shenanigans, the protagonists of the Dark Tower series at one point venture into our own world, where they encounter Stephen King – the man writing the book in which they appear – and that this self-insertion proves to be a critical plot point.
What you may not have picked up as a non-reader is that the 1999 hit-and-run plays a role in this event, in which the driver of the car is depicted as an unwitting servant of the Crimson King.
Like, imagine being that guy. You nearly kill a famous horror writer by accident, then five years later the guy publishes a book about a magic cowboy where one of the plot’s critical junctures hinges on you, personally, being a pawn of Cthulhu Santa Claus.
1: The premise is technically plausible, but insane.
2: The naming of concepts/plot elements is even weirder.
3: The ending comes completley out of left field and is hands-down batshit.
4: There’s a bad guy somewhere with the intitals R.F. He doesn’t fit into this story’s world at all. But he is here, he’s smiling too much, and he’s making everything way worse.
5: Dicks. So many dicks. There are penises every 20 pages or so.
6: Women’s bodies are doing things that women’s bodies do not actually ever do, but this is painted as totally normal and absolutely what every woman’s body does regularly. The weird female body stuff actually distracts you from the story.
7: Why is there a cowboy here? There should not be a cowboy here…
8: Someone is fat. They’re painted as obscenely, grotesquely obese. They might actually only be a few pounds overweight, but it is apparently disgusting. They’re also probably a horrible person.
9: Weasels. If you’ve read enough of King’s books, you know where I’m going here.
10: Somehow, through all of this weird crap I just described, you adore this book and can’t remember the last time you got this invested in a novel. You might cry at the end. You will likely be scouring the library for another book by Stephen King. There are plenty to choose from, at least.
If you like pagan shit and folklore and you don’t know the Mari Llwyd, check it out. A rap battling alcoholic horse ghost comin’ to fuck up your night.
LET’S GET YOU IN THE MOOD, KIDS, IT’S A WILD ONE!!! Background music for your enjoyment. If you’re on mobile, here’s a Spotify option. Want to really set the scene? Grab some snacks! Snacks such as, for example, popcorn, like this popcorn given out to passers-by by Butterkist today in front of Downing Street.
OKAY so. Last update we had just learned that Will Wragg MP was accusing the Tory party of blackmail! News that came just as I was writing the damn update even. So, let’s pick up from there!
Well, naturally, as the rats are running from the sinking ship, Boris Johnson is cutting an increasingly lonely figure. But hey, you can always count on your true friends to defend you! Up until now, that’s been the job of Nadine Dorres (the galaxy-brained genius behind Operation Red Meat, more on that in a moment) and Jacob Rees-Mogg (a time travelling Victorian dandy too stupid to spot he’s landed 150 years in the future); but now, Tumblrs, in steps your new favourite clown character in this saga: Michael Fabricant.
Now Michael Fabricant is a terrible man who last year described Palestinian activists as “primitives” who are “trying to bring to London what they do in the Middle East”, which is frankly the mere tip of the iceberg, if an iceburg were made of frozen liquid shit and melted slugs. He is also, and I swear to god I am not shitting you Tumblrs, I swear this is genuine, he is a real man who has made these real choices - he is a man who appears to very literally be cosplaying Boris Johnson. Look at this:
SAME CLOWN WIG!!!!
He’s also spotted his sycophantic chance to worm his way into the mouldering and collapsing bodily cavity where Big Dog once had a heart, so he stepped up to the plate when he heard this TERRIBLE accusation of blackmail. Oh yes! The hour came and Fabricant was not found wanting! Let’s see his defence!
The birthday party - for a 50-something man, for heaven’s sake - was in the Cabinet Office, as well. The Cabinet Office, the place where they are supposed to carry out the business of government.
Summer 2020 was when my cousin got married. The wedding was postponed from the spring, when they had hoped to throw a massive celebration for all their family and friends to attend. That celebration never happened. The postponed wedding, in the end, was really small. Just my cousin and his wife, their three kids, their two mums, and a couple of their siblings. None of the extended family were able to attend. None of their friends were able to attend. But they couldn’t postpone it any longer because my cousin was terminally ill. So I didn’t get to go to his wedding, and in fact I never got to see him in person again. When he died, I didn’t get to go to his funeral.
My little nephew and nieces, aged 3, 4 and 6, haven’t had a birthday party for two years.
But bloody Alexander de Pfeffel, at the height of lockdown, got to have a 56th birthday party in the middle of the Cabinet Office, where he was supposed to be running the government.
Jesus wept. And so do I.
Meanwhile in Wales, our First Minister Mark Drakeford spent the whole of that first lockdown living in the summer house at the bottom of his garden, because members of his family were shielding, so to protect them while still doing his job he put himself into isolation. Now that’s leadership. No wonder his approval ratings are sky high while Johnson’s plummet.
Okay I have an update that won’t wait
Although I’m going to leave in Llywela’s contribution because I think it deserves to be seen. Just to really drive the point home, on the 20th March 2021, a seven year old girl called Josephine wrote a letter to Boris Johnson, explaining that she was cancelling her birthday party because she “wants everyone to be ok”.
In response, here is the now-deleted tweet from Big Dog himself:
As a reminder, his current defence is that he didn’t know the rules on parties. Interesting that he tweeted the rules in that case.
BUT YOU GUYS
I am delighted to announce that as of this morning (25th Jan) Cressida Dick has revealed
That the Met Police
Will now be investigating a number of events held in Number 10 and across Whitehall during COVID restrictions
Well guys, I’m currently standing at some 66k followers. I don’t think anything on here is flagged, but I don’t know how to tell (I have tagged rocks as “sexy” and “this looks like a penis” after all). I imagine after purge night many of you could disappear. For the bots, meh, but for all you real people I’m so sorry tumblr has not acted maturely and hired mods like basically every other website and is now resorting to killing their business model.
is it normal that whenever i sneeze i think about Shardik? (that’s only when i’m sick - when i’m not i just remember that Irish folk story about “bless you”. Sch. says i inceptioned him with that story and now he can’t ever not say bless you when someone sneezes.) and i can’t stop thinking about Shardik for the past hour i feel like my head is going to explode any second now
you know, that cyberbear from The Dark Tower, one of the guardians of the beams
i mean, it’s always such a vivid image, like with all the disgusting details like parasites etc ugh
like this
The bear would have had him just the same, would have left Eddie Dean’s guts hanging in gaudy strings from the lowest branches of the pine, if another of those sneezing fits had not come on it at that moment. It kicked the ashy remains of the campfire into a black cloud and then stood almost doubled over, huge front paws on its huge thighs, looking for a moment like an old man in a fur coat, an old man with a cold. It sneezed again and again—AH-CHOW! AH-CHOW! AH-CHOW!—and clouds of parasites blew out of its muzzle. Hot urine flowed in a stream between its legs and hissed out the campfire’s scattered embers.
or this
“Missed me, you hairy motherf—”Eddie began, and then the bear, its head still cocked back to look at him, sneezed. Eddie was immediately drenched in hot snot that was filled with thousands of small white worms. They wriggled frantically on his shirt, his forearms, his throat and face.
