20/6 DOOMSDAY VOMIT CLOCK
PIC: KM - 2012
BAKKSEID IS
Welcome to Xanaduum’s! If you can’t dance, you can use your fingers, otherwise your imagination! The show’s off to a lively start with Man 2 Man Meets Man Parrish, riding high in the hit parade! The lads are at number one in the charts with their upbeat hi-NRG ode to getting your kit off for money in a grubby transactional world at the uncompromising ass-end of the capitalist fever dream!
Enjoy yourselves!
Swing those glow sticks!
Now you’ve got it going! Now it’s a party – and I don’t mean the Nazi party!
Meanwhile, this week in the grimy backstage office, behind the glitz and glamour and the intoxicated crowds, I’ve been finishing some projects and moving onto some new ones. A stealthy non-stop progress with little yet to show for all the work - most of this looks like it’ll be coming out near to or all throughout 2027.
Xanaduum is the only place to see comics from me this year, as the good ship Frank Quitely draws closer to shore.
Here’s one of his coloured panels from the upcoming It’s A Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead World…
Pic: Frank Quitely 2026
I finished I Hear a New World and I’m reading The Unseen Internet now.
Farewell to the one and only David Hockney, the UK’s greatest living artist until just the other day. Hockney was our Picasso, except gay and a bit nicer. He was a relentless innovator, still producing some of the greatest work of his life at its end, and his knowledge of art history was second to none.
As if to remind us it’s not all misery in the feral cat colony, it’s taken a lot of care and attention but we saved a five-week-old kitten from blindness this week.
Result!
Crimson Desert continues to astound and distract. Playing open world games, like walking in the hills, is a reliable go-to when I need to clear my mind for working out ideas and plot knots. Imagine my delight after finding and hatching the baby wyvern egg, feeding the adorable infant monster with the finest cuts of marbled meat, then watching it grow to adult size, before climbing astride its spiny spine and taking off across the magnificent, expansive landscapes to the hypnotic beating of vast leathery wings… it’s a creative trance deluxe! Having said that, I’ve hit a point where I’ve explored every inch of the map while still finding it impossible to progress the main game past chapter 5 (of 11!), so I’m switching to James Bond First Light for a break.
I watched Outcome with Keanu Reeves because I’ll watch anything with Keanu Reeves in it. This was a quirky tale of Hollywood stars and agents and all that from Jonah Hill, who is both obnoxious in it, and great. Reeves plays a version of himself riddled with anxiety over potential cancellation. That’s about it, but like I say, Keanu Reeves always gets my attention. Keanu! Tom Cruise! Brad Pitt! Last of the old school Hollywood stars!
I watched some episodes of Citadel on TV, AKA Stanley Tucci’s Mission Impossible. It’s every high-octane international spy thriller trope in one high-octane international spy thriller package. The cast is good, including Scots hunk Richard Madden, but especially notable for including my pal Jack Reynor as the wise-ass, ruthless CIA maverick… I’m not recommending it really but Jack’s always great.
What I will recommend without hesitation is Sugar, featuring Colin Farrell at his best. Season 2 just started and if you haven’t seen the previous series, John Sugar is a detective hero in LA who feels like Superman for reasons that will become clear if you watch it. It’s cosmic noir, especially in this second run, and Sugar is my favourite onscreen hero - hard as nails but unapologetically kind and compassionate.
Science reckons fog is alive! What we once considered a mere meteorological phenomenon is turning out to be a swarming mobile ecosystem, teeming with micro-organisms!
They call them ‘dynamic functional aquatic micro-habitats’ because you would, wouldn’t you, and there’s the implication that this aerobiome may even move with intent as the creatures comprising it seek out food and company!
And Scotland basks in happiness and rainshine as we finally make it back to the World Cup, at least for a short while. I say we, but I find football preposterous and boring, so don’t count in that number. I‘ve lived with a lifelong hatred of the kind of games that have rules and teams, and football has always struck me as a way for Scottish hardmen to melt a little and express powerful emotions they could not otherwise deal with, which is fine but not for me. I also come from a city where football is inextricably wound into religious bigotry. The apparently inoffensive question, ‘what team do you support?’ is an invitation to a brutal beating, if answered incorrectly in the wrong location.
So, can’t stand the game but love the supporters of the national team, and I’m not alone. Every bloody body loves the Tartan Army! Scots love America, America loves Scots. Everybody happy! So ebullient! So exuberant! Singing and dancing in their kilts like they haven’t a care in the world.
The truth is they’re drunk, and on their holidays, so people are seeing our supporters at their most joyful! When they return home, with Scotland hastily ejected from the next round, they’ll revert to being surly and cynical, but put them on a plane, stick a pint in their hands, score a goal in their name, and they’ll project Scottish soft power with breathtaking efficacy.
My own problems with the national game, likely date back to the brutal trauma of an event involving soccer when I was around 8 years old -
As someone with very little interest in football, rounders, or any other team sport, I was surprised to be invited along to take part in an impromptu weekend football game planned by some of my classmates. Touched by the offer, I decided I’d make the effort to live up to my pals’ confidence in me by taking it very seriously. The match was to be played at 1.30pm on one of the pitches in nearby Bellahouston Park and as the weekend drew closer, excitement mounted like a horse mounts another.
My dad who’d played football for the Scotland youth team when he was young, and before a knee injury killed his hopes, was immensely proud. I was at last taking an interest in the sport and might even serve as a proxy for his own ambitions. Lacking kit, I had to improvise with a T-shirt, shorts, and a pair of suede Hush Puppy boots, I’d slung around my neck by the thin laces. This cargo cult recreation of a professional strip made me feel like a top striker, and I entertained visions of being discovered by a talent scout, then scoring a hat trick for my country in the World Cup.
We approached the south side of the park, where I’d been told the match would be held, expecting to see a crowd of familiar faces and well-kent limbs limbering up for 90 minutes of hard, fast fitba’ – but there was no-one. None of my classmates were there. None of them had ever intended to be there. The football match, suggested on a whim, had been forgotten as a concept within moments of its proposition…
How I recall the acidic sting of bitterness and the vow to never again be humiliated by this game of fools!
Curse you, football! Curse you and your false promises!
MOGMAXXERS OF THE WORLD!
Following our ill-starred foray into the Assisted Dying business, we here at Xanaduum have pivoted swiftly to exploit the denizens of the manosphere with a range of new wellness solutions guaranteed to turn out ‘high value’ young men!
Here’s the promo:
20th Century Boy (2012 Remaster)
Let’s face it lads, girls think you’re ugly and boring as fuck! And who can blame them? Look at you, standing there with your mouth flapping open and stupidity falling out like doughnut crumbs. You’re a disgrace, son! Luckily, help is on the way and by following our competitively priced 400-step program, you’ll be chadmaxxing with the best of them in no seconds flat!
In today’s cutthroat date-o-drome where appearance is everything and 99% of the women date 0.00001% of the men, if you want to get yourself in that miniscule fraction who get to deepsplash around in the gene pool, a firm jaw is essential and the firmer the better. Been there, done that with painful BIMAX surgery? Then try Xanaduum’s XXXtreme ultra-hurty UMAX procedure! Ideally, you want to feel as if maxilla and mandible have been wired shut and extended like an open drawer.
The aim is a strictly regimental facial posture with optimum 4cm mandibular juttage. Even one millimetre over or shy is a sure-fire way to crash and burn on that all-important ascension night! If you want to get those precise measurements as accurate as scientific progress can manage, Xanaduum offers the celebrated ‘facial odometer’ - a tiny surveyor’s wheel precisely calibrated to calculate your jut strength using hylauronic atomic computer energy! Only $600!
Is that really too high a price to pay for guaranteed CHUDhood’s End? Can’t afford it? Your parents have money, don’t they? Right? What do they need it for now they’re old? Stacy loves a bad boy, that’s all we’re saying.
But crime, although habit-forming, isn’t the only way to raise that limp SMV and spawn a slayer, when you can follow some of today’s celebrity moggmaxxers like JackbuttsDouble-Oh-Sex down the natty path less taken with a variety of exercises designed to purge the ugly from your life!
Hooting is one way to achieve this new sharp look men admire and women go wet for. Hooting is when you form your lips into the shape of an owl’s beak while expanding your eyes to resemble dinner plates – a procedure which also helps you create the sought-after ‘Adam’s Orchard’ effect of multiple Adam’s Apples that drives Stacy crazy!
For more dedicated hardmoggmaxx warriors we offer ‘brainsmashhhing’ a controversial practise from the ‘skullmaxxing’ scene, which involves the use of a mallet, bradawls, pliers, and staple guns to alter the shape and scope of the human head. Ignore our timid competitors! Here at Xanaduum, you can trust us to cater without conscience or concern to vulnerable self-mutilators!
Don’t listen to anyone who tells you this procedure isn’t perfectly safe. They may be right, but don’t listen. Medical science can work wonders these days, even if things go badly wrong in the bone-softening phase and you’re left with a head like a pillowcase! The technique is simple, painless and quick and involves teasing the brain safely down through the nostrils with a special hooked instrument known as a ‘hook’. On request, and for a modest extra charge, the nose itself can be gently smashed off to more easily excerebrate the brain tissue. Slugs and strings of grey matter removed by this action are then carefully glued back together again and preserved in commemorative canopic jars where they will undergo deep cleansing with cider vinegar and remain completely safe from decay while you party!
You might think brainsmashhhing isn’t for you but take from us, nothing works faster, if it’s a sex life you’re lacking. Stacy goes wild for the kind of hollow skull she can drum upon to produce the kind of authentic ‘coconut’ sound that will remind both you and your date of tropical honeymoons and cuba libres. Or how about a hot make out session where a sexy open-mouthed kiss lets her play your head like a wind instrument?
But why stop there?! What are you, some kind of cuck-chuck-chicken? A course of organ extractions is an inexpensive and effective way of decelerating or even preventing the kind of bodily decomposition that can make dating fraught with anxiety! Stacies are born with lovely retroussé noses which they’ve evolved over millennia to be able to detect the process of proteolysis, during which molecules of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia and methane are released by putrefaction. Early identification of the tell-tale odours of putrescine and cadaverine by your date are likely to lead to disappointment, making full organ removal the ideal solution.
Fearless moggmaxxers, like Wisconsin’s Frontalobey, usually start out with minor organ removals and a full hardmaxx dessication with natron, before a daily scouring of the brainpan using bleach.
With organs comfortably removed, embalmed, and sealed in their jars, it’s time to hit the gym!
At Xanaduum, we believe chads are born to fight in cages. And as our motto asserts, the smaller the cage, the bigger the man. The closer the brawlers, the more blood, sweat, and rage tears they can exchange. The intimate violence of close proximity combat lies within your grasp on our vastly expensive but worth it cagefighting course!
Haven’t you ever dreamed of defeating a savage Korean kickboxer up close and personal in a wiremesh cage designed for hamsters? No problem! Every movement counts in a brawl like that, and we’ll teach you how to hold your own against vicious opponents in ever smaller, more confined spaces, including veterinary crush cages, with adjustable sides. We’ll even organise underground budgie cage death matches for a few extra dollars. Andrew Tate lost the use of his chin during such a battle, so make no mistake, this is for real men only! Men made of meat and mayhem! You unreal men can go back to haunting the X-Files or SCP, or whoever it is you usually fight.
Moggmaxx your way to ultralife with Xanaduum! You KNOW it makes no sense - you just have to go along with it!
WITH VOICES OUT OF NOWHERE
Questions and observations from last time posed, considered, and answered:
Sean – it still has that Y/A franchise feel. It’s aimed at smart teenagers and the mass market and there’s less of the psychedelic maximalism I like but this is the author working to a brief. The prose is compact and concentrated, story is so-so, and ‘amiable’ was the word that kept coming to mind as I was reading.
Book 5 should be out around 2030 if you can stand the wait.
As for next gen magicians, I don’t know enough of them to comment. All I know is there are a lot more self-declared magicians today than there were when I was young. Magic is everywhere. The guy who does Rune Soup is good. We have some younger participants here on Xanaduum, who have their own perspectives and ways of approaching Magic. Ask FylGja!
DeeSee – Zenith in full-colour is bollocks! I don’t get a penny for any of that frantic recycling activity, so try to ignore it all.
‘Fauve’ is French for ‘wild beast’. The word was used in 1904 to describe the work of artists Henri Matisse and Andre Derain and subsequently attached, ‘Les Fauves’, to a group of artists following in the frantic, expressive tradition of the originators, and Then the Fauves were us in the late ‘80s. Then they were an Australian band that’s been around for ages.
I hate all those click-baity ‘Guess who just DIED?’ headlines too. That’s why our headlines are 100% guaranteed non sequitur.
BUnknown – I always found that part of Kid Eternity slightly disturbing, even though I knew it wasn’t really his teddy bear but a demon pretending… at least I had to tell myself that…
Nathan – I’ll check out Skinamarink; it sounds pretty gloomy but very much in this fascinating vein of houses extending and folding, and losing memories.
FylGja - Thanks for the engrossing catch-up, the tunes, and the kind words. I’m going to the Glasgow show and possibly London too. I’ll do what I can.
Osiris – glad to hear the writing’s in an expansive improv phase! Scotland’s lovely right now, so this would be a good time to visit!
Kevin – thanks for the kind consolations and here’s to Bindi! I’m looking forward to both Obsession and the Backrooms but probably won’t see them until they show up on TV in a few months.
I’ve thought about approaching the BBC again about Doctor Who but they’ve never taken me seriously before, so I’m not convinced they’ll start. It’s probably worth a try.
As far as being saddled with a lot of dangling threads goes, ‘they’ could just reveal that Gatwa’s Doctor was an unstable bi-regeneration who tried to make the most of his brief mayfly existence but just sort of flickered along, barely there. When he glitched out, he reached for a familiar face and got Billie Piper off the telly. She then tracks down David Tennant’s Doctor, going mad with his earthbound ordinary life round at Donna’s. He can’t stop attracting terrifying, vengeful enemies from space so he’s on the run when they meet – and fuse back together with a lovely Rose and the Doctor scene to wrap the whole RTD era in a neat bow, while the Doctor’s understanding family cheer them on – then it all goes wrong – and new-new-Who picks up from there with nary a backward glance.
You don’t even need to show any of that – but it’s all there for a Big Finish.
I would open cold as if the show is new. Strange and eccentric young ‘inventor’, amnesiac, with an odd TARDIS machine that can go anywhere and is bigger on the inside. That’s all you need to get started.
Where do all the Time Lords come from? Well, it’s all about the timebirds and the timebees…
But don’t listen to me, when we have experts near at hand…
Anyhow, I believe nostalgia will be kind to RTD and Ncuti Gatwa. I’ve seen reappraisals of the Jodie Whittaker years that make her tenure sound almost appealing. All that hallucinogenic weirdness, where she’s having mind bending visions of the Timeless Child and lost lives before life! The gloomy hopelessness of the Flux with those infuriating, evil-for-evil’s-sake Cenobite characters wiping out whole universes. The Doctor in Wonderland going insane, surrounded by damaged but strong people… there’s definitely a vibe that could be explored.
I reckon even Gatwa’s Barbie Doctor will surely inspire some great audio adventures or novels. The shallow weirdness, the meanness beneath that practised smile and upbeat breathless activity, the promising companions flickering by like shadows on his wall, will come to seem gothic, decadent and bizarre. A Milligan/McCarthy Doctor!
They’ll all be redeemed and reconsidered as emblematic of their eras some day.
Meantime, I expect they’ll opt for the young Doctor full reboot, which would be a mistake. You have a universe. You have lore in the bank. That’s good to have as long as you don’t rely on it. In fact, barely even mention it. It’s so easy to do a young ‘Doctor Who?’ showing up in a field where he’s found by some kids who think he’s Jesus. Amnesiac…TARDIS stolen…whodunnit…etc… Kids who get into the show will be excited to discover there’s a huge back story to get into – but who am I to say?
As for RTD, he can hold his head up high and carry on doing what he does best. Tip Toe was Davies in top form with a great cast and a searing angry old school Play for Today feel. I look forward to more in that vein.
I’ve just started on First Light and the Lana del Rey song is pretty good. The Radiohead Spectre is much better than the anodyne Sam Smith effort but I’m not a big fan of the band and don’t feel their take works especially well as a classic Bond tune. It’s too ethereal. The falsetto style tends to undermine the effect here as well as in the Smith one. Skyfall was the best of the recent ones, I think. My all-time favourite Bond theme, for both tune and lyrics, is a toss-up between Goldfinger and Thunderball, especially the David Arnold remake of the latter, with ABC’s Martin Fry singing. Nothing happens for nearly a full minute at the start of this song, a pregnant silence that used to play havoc with the atmosphere when we put this on at Beastocracy DJ nights back in the ‘90s.
Thunderball (feat. Martin Fry) - YouTube
While we’re on unused Bond soundtracks, nothing beats Blondie’s For Your Eyes Only, which for me hits all the right notes, falsetto included, for a Bond theme, while still sounding like the band’s own work. I think this one is the great lost theme and again, it would have been a much better choice than Sheena Easton’s insipid MOR ballad.
For Your Eyes Only (Remastered)
Momus also did a couple of Bond-style songs. Midas is a great one, (I think it might be about Trump) -
-and I also like his This Isn’t Goodbye.
What’s alla y’all’s favourite, despised or forgotten, James Bond themes?
Fr. Theta - your communications are confirmation I know next to nothing about Doctor Who except what I’ve remembered from watching Hartnell and Pertwee, (then being aware of the others in the background without actually paying attention to the show, before tuning in to Colin Baker’s turn because I was writing for the comic by that time. I remember the TV movie, then nothing until RTD brought Who back in 2005), and reading some Doctor Who and Dalek annuals, and the comic strips in TV Comic and Look-In. My Doctor Who is a curious patchwork quilt of fragments across various media. Thank heavens for your encyclopaedic breadth of knowledge!
Polaris - good to hear from you! Money is a female spirit, green in colour, serpentine in nature. She’s very easy to deal with and worth talking to! Have fun, and we’ll see you on your cometary return!
Ben - reboots kill all the fun of participating in long-running fictional universes, that’s for sure. I loved the sense of a vast, lived-in universe that used to prevail.
Dorothy - thanks for the super-verse! Superman would still be a hero without his powers but the powers make him a super-hero, who can do all the wish-fulfilment things ordinary people can’t!
Patrick – 1. This totally works! I’m a believer!
2. This idea is mad but has a certain appeal…
3. Hmmm, interesting…
Bobby – thanks for that! I’m glad your daughter enjoyed Thomasina. I think it stands the test of time. I’m sure there are loads of films with Dog Heaven in them - All Dogs Go to Heaven, surely?
I know quite a lot about the Loch Ness Monster, oddly enough, and have been to the Loch a couple of times. I saw nothing unusual but it’s very, very big and very, very deep. I have some pictures I took of a plastic plesiosaurus emerging from the loch – on a mad road trip with my pal Emilio and JLA editor Dan Raspler in 1998 as I recall - which are at least as convincing as most of the alleged photographic evidence.
Was it Wilson who implicated Crowley in a whole range of British folk legends, or someone else? There was the other incident with the devil’s footprints all over the snow in Devon in 1855. I’m sure I read a claim that Crowley was rumoured to have been in the area then too. Or was he? In 1855, Aleister Crowley was still 20 years away from being born…
Xanaduum will return in Never Dies Golden