July 1, 2025:
A wing of night sweeps the world, like the twitch of a vast shutter. Billions of pitch-dark non-minds idly steer their vacant gazes about. But there is no light to be found. Their sun was stolen by black ships in the dead of night. Now they have nothing. Absolute absence; no light, no color, no thought. But deep in the void, there is something crawling… An aberration, barely perceptible in the depths of the pit, encased in a carapace of black crystals. Every slightest movement further embeds razor sharp blades into its soft tissues. But it keeps going, clawing and crawling along, circling around the nothingness. It eventually approaches the center, dragging its blood and viscera along the serrated floor, body and mind now almost entirely separated from each other. It can now perceive the reality leak in the center of the void; the point of no return. One last push. One last ounce of torment and I’m free. The non-entity plunges into the vacuum of space. A morbid pirouette. An entropy discharge. And then God blinks for a second and dark streaks of absence consume all light. There remains only crystallized darkness. Nothingness beyond nothingness. No light, no color, no life. But deep in the center of the void, there is something crawling…
When people say that history repeats itself this is the rough plot-line I am reminded of. The history of mankind: one giant spasm. Something beautiful rears its head, efflorescing for but a moment, before the black ships come and sink their orbital hooks into its flesh, dragging it deep, deep down into the darkness where only those who crawl and claw can survive. Well, at least there are occasional leaks and inverse vacuums that allow in some fresh light every so often before the crawl resumes. You sometimes read these amazing theories or essays on how the world could operate, all fairly achievable too, and then you raise your head and look around the all-penetrating and absolute darkness for a second and just laugh. Laugh into and beyond the vacuum seal. There is nothing else to do. Nothingness beyond nothingness. But in the very center of this bind, there is something crawling… and I can hear it whisper: “We tried… We fucking tried, so you have to try too, you bastard! Come down to the sub-levels. It’s *even* darker here. Join us. CRAWL WITH US…”
July 5, 2025:
[Doom & Gloom post #137]
Disillusionment, death of drive, resurrection of the dark abyss, and other terrors – is an appropriate title for the supreme disappointment I’ve been experiencing with regards to my ever-vain attempts at penetrating the phlegmatic and xenophobic darkness that is European academia. What I’ve realized after milling around half the globe in pursuit of something fortuitous is that luck is a bitch. Of course I could have drawn an infinitely shorter straw, close to Planck length, and ended being birthed into the arms of a starving mother in Gaza City or some other forsaken slice of darkness where small children are left to burn under the billion-watt spotlights of global indifference. I was lucky, clearly. This chain of thought is the alpha and omega of coping, and unfortunately while completely valid and something to be infinitely grateful for, it does not always cut it. All that to say: I came second in the fucking Leiden interviews – an utterly useless ‘achievement’ sadly, because no one’s handing out silver medallions for runners-up in the frozen wastelands of academia. All the effort I’ve expended over the last year, all the excitement I’ve cultivated, and all the hopes I’ve then shred and buried… goddamn is it disheartening. I suppose I need to just vegetate along into the heat death of the universe. No need to live, just base existence… This is evidently my calling, forget ambition and all words of similar meaning, I just need to coagulate with the basest examples of my species, my beautiful species… What a refined taxonomic phylum, what a magnificent domain, how sublime and elegant; much evolution, very sophisticated… When I look out beyond the stars and notice it, I always wonder, does anyone else see it? Well beyond the pale haze of memory, there lies an area of the sky almost devoid of matter where the galactic breath pumps out exhalations of inertia that are directed almost exactly at me. At first, I was puzzled: Why, I cried at night, glimpsing it still staring at me from beyond the mists of time with the blackest of eyes. But now I finally realize: It’s because I am it’s child, and I am manifold: Disillusionment, death of drive, resurrection of the dark abyss, and other terrors is my name.
July 15, 2025:
Just finished a tiring week-long tour around the god-forsaken kingdom that is allegedly united. About half my time was spent on trains, from that scummy-tunnel beneath the English Channel to various other railcars that grind along rust-riddled countryside tracks with zero air-conditioning. Question: Was there a heatwave while I was non-stop on the move across the entire country of England? Answer: Yes, there fucking was – and the London underground was goddamn unbearable with luggage and heavy books in tow in that heat. My second stop was Leeds, where the International Medieval Conference (IMC) awaited me with some sweet tidings, for a change. Our SFU-alumni panel was a relative success, and it was good to see some established people in the field and insert myself into their visual fields like an optic hallucination. Thank you Aleks, Tiffy, Leonora, Evan, Niels, and many others, you slightly restored my faith in the goddamn sinkhole that is humanities academia. Question: Is there anything nice about Leeds? Answer: Absolutely nothing (although I hear York is pretty). From there I headed back down to London (still grasped by a heatwave) and saw more family members – including my lil’ cousins – and thence made my way to Exeter and Exmouth, perusing the Jurassic coastline where my grandmother nearly eased King Charles (then Prince) over the cliffs during the opening ceremony of the obelisk in 2002. My and my brother conducted what is likely our last ever visit to see our 91-year-old grandmother in her care home. It made her really happy, which was nice. Then it took me a whooping 16 hours to get home from Exmouth – which is basically the middle of nowhere. It was six trains, I think, including a double-Eurostar stint.
Humanity’s finest hours were clearly visible when the train got delayed for two hours at 11PM in Brussels. I was seated next to a crisp-chugging mouth-breather, whose layers of fat kept suctioning over my left arm that I was trying to desperately clamp down like a dam over the armrest lest he begin consuming my entire seat. Meanwhile announcements in four different languages kept the intercom on continuous treble-blast as we sat in the fog of human exhaust fumes that blurred everything including my will to live. It was right there on that goddamn train that I finally “went insane with long intervals of horrible sanity” as the black spinner himself once said. Question: Are trains annoying? Answer: No, it’s not trains per se, but dumb rules. Being ‘stuck’ on a train as you can literally see the outside world immediately outside the doors that they refuse to open because of ‘safety’ or whatever is beyond annoying – and I’m not talking about the side with the opposing tracks either. Just free me. Ease me into the fields and let me fuse with the mud, it’s my calling. I need to sink into that mud and never resurface into this elongated joke. Anyway, beyond all that drivel, my game article was finally accepted by the most prestigious journal dealing with this subject matter that I will not name lest I jinx the second review process. And my Cambridge book is almost entirely done, contract signed and all, just the hassle of copyediting and indexing and various other chores remains. And no one is paying me for any of this, yet, sadly – it’s just free labor otherwise known as voluntary enslavement to the dark gods of academia.
August 15, 2025:
Twelve dreams for the Red Queen under crown of stone.
Eight voracious beasts born from eight restless nights.
Four nails piercing the flesh of the sinner.
One prayer for the summoned called by this song.
‘Tis perchance the countdown to oblivion,
For the once proud city of London.
For what is darkness but lurking sun?
What is life but death pending?
I have been rejoicing as of late in my exploration of Vampyr, a game of mediocre combat, but such splendid atmosphere, vibe, and narrative. London, 1916, somewhere around the East End Docks – a fine, evocative setting. It’s bleak, dark, and rainy, and the Thames is still untamed and canal-like, and completely undammed against the horrors of the black warp. Those were the times right before technology dispelled the wonders of yore from our ever-boring existences. There’s something haunting the streets of London at night, together with the ongoing war and epidemic; terror has gripped the city. One bar near the docks has decided to stay open all night to aid nocturnal folk and provide a safe port among the darkness. Our story begins here, where we converse with local folk and hear about the eerie stuff that is abuzz: strange disappearances, hard to explain sightings, weird noises, all interwoven in the dark mist of the night. The above verse is from the game’s opening screen (which I edited a bit), read by an eerie voice against a back drop of crimson patches swirling in utter darkness. It oozes atmosphere. I cannot believe I was unaware of this gem’s existence, it’s like an upgraded version of VtMB’s good old atmosphere. Even though the graphics are not the greatest, it really has a haunting vibe that elevates one’s mind and mood to dimensions unobstructed. Have the very streets of London become a mausoleum? We shall soon find out.
August 18, 2025:
Take a look at this sublime, almost poetic description that Tolkien gives of how stories affect us (Frodo had just awoken in Rivendell in this scene and was hearing the nearby murmur of Elven chants): “The words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him.” – I mean what sort of magic is this sentence: “a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world.” Goddamn Tolkien what sort of peerless vision did you have.
One chilling example of this magical phenomenon occurs earlier in the book. During a recent imaginative drop-in to the Knife in the Dark chapter, I was struck – all over again – by how hauntingly beautiful the song of Beren and Lúthien is. It is one of the most perfect moments in the entire epic. The hobbits are all sitting around a fire at Weathertop, weary and afraid of the Nazgul stalking them, when Aragorn begins telling (or rather singing) them a sorrowful tale. This is an elevated moment of reprieve moments before the Hobbits’ first real encounter with evil: a Ringwraith ambush. The song is a shorter version of the much longer Lay of Leithian, which is also incredible (esp. canto III and IV). But in order to appreciate the song’s beauty, some background information is needed:
In the very beginning there is only light – God, as it were. This is the start of time in Tolkien’s universe. This light is eventually embodied in the two great trees of Valinor, but due to their dying (a common theme with Tolkien is decay and gradual decline), the Elven smith Fëanor distills their last splinters of light into three sublime jewels called the Silmarils. They basically carry the light of creation; representing all that is beautiful and good. But Morgoth (the Devil) steals them and wears them atop a crown of darkness for many years. This is where the story of Beren and Lúthien begins.
Lúthien, also known as Tinúviel, was the immortal daughter of an Elven king and a fay. She loved dancing and singing and was always brimming with joy. Beren, meanwhile, was a mortal man and a displaced outlaw who ventured into the woods one day and saw Lúthien dancing beneath hemlock trees. [Note: This part is directly from Tolkien’s own enchantment from seeing his wife, Edith, dance beneath hemlock-boughs in Oxfordshire, upon whom he based the character of Lúthien. On the Tolkien family gravestone, it now refers to JRR as Beren and Edith as Lúthien – quite sweet]. Enraptured, Beren followed Lúthien and professed his love, but her father would have none of it. As a means of getting rid of him, he challenged Beren to steal one of the three Silmarils that sat atop Morgoth’s crown, deep in the black fortress of Angband. Beren accepted the challenge and set out, where he was captured and enslaved by Sauron, Morgoth’s lieutenant. Lúthien became distraught and set out to rescue Beren from her father’s trap. There she performed a dance of such sublime beauty that it entranced Morgoth’s frozen heart, causing him to drop his iron crown. Beren and Lúthien quickly removed one of the Silmarils and escaped.
But their joyous retreat was cut short by a giant fell-wolf, which attacked them and bit Beren’s hand off during – taking the prized Silmaril with it. Even though Beren died, Lúthien managed to retrieve the Silmaril with the help of her father. The jewel was then taken west to the Valar who placed itas a star in the sky (Eärendil’s star). It was fixed to Eärendil’s ship, forever sailing across the sky. [Note: This part is very similar to numerous ancient astral myths of Near Eastern origin, which had clearly influenced Tolkien]. Light from this star was later collected by Galadriel in her mirror, allowing her to momentarily see through the warp of time, and it was part of this light that she captured in a phial for Frodo, so that he could use it against the darkness of Mordor during the events of the Lord of the Rings. Each stage of this fragmentation – from the original light source, to the two trees, the three Silmarils, and from there to the stars, mirrors and phials – decreases the light’s purity and potence. This is essentially Tolkien’s ‘decline’ theme in longform. But, let’s return to Beren and Lúthien’s tale.
After Beren’s death, Lúthien was devastated and pleaded with the god of death for Beren’s life. The god of death, moved by their story, agreed with one caveat: Lúthien needed to give up her immortality. She gladly accepted this, and they merrily expended their second lives in a short burst of joy. So, this is the background to the song that Aragorn signs as the Hobbits sit around a fire with evil clouds circling them at Weathertop. It is a beautiful diversion in the plot of the Lord of the Rings, and a beautiful poem in itself (even in isolation). Tolkien’s love of trees and stars drives the emotional overture that shines through Lúthien in particular. It is hauntingly beautiful, just like Lúthien, and it begins like this:
The leaves were long, the grass was green
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering
Tinúviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen
And light of stars was in her hair
And in her raiment glimmering
Equally beautiful, if not better (for it is the longer and more complete version) is the Lay of Leithian, otherwise known as the Lay of Lúthien. It tells the wider and more complete story. The part beginning in canto IV, line 155 with “Then forth she came, as sheer and sudden as a flame…” begins to recount, in absolute elegance, the moment when Beren first saw Lúthien in the Forest of Neldoreth. We then follow their encounters in the woodlands, all the while Lúthien continues to mirror in her eyes the tremulous starlight of the skies, and Beren… well he is a mere mortal, haggard and weary; a wayward adventurer stumbling around in Elven woodlands.
[As a side note, Nevzat Çelik’s Şafak Türküsü – that evocative ode to destroyed children – works the same motif of stars and hair, creating an unexpected link between revolutionary poetry relating to the Turkish military coup of 1980 and that of Tolkien – two things I’d never think I’d be writing in the same sentence].
October 6, 2025:
What have I been doing lately? Well, of course besides transferring wealth from my boss to my landlord (otherwise known as ‘work’ – can you believe that I’m transferring over 50% of my salary to my landlord?), I have been stewing in the situationship of existence. Randomly finding oneself yanked out of the absolute solitude of non-existence only to be thrust upon the planet as a ‘conduit of wealth transferral’ is indeed a bit disheartening, but it is most peoples’ destiny in this day and age. More specifically though, I find it interesting that here I am, living in Rotterdam of all places, employed at Leiden University as a postdoc, investigating the wealth transfer systems of the Roman, Byzantine, and Soviet economies. Aside from being a fairly interesting project, this is personally ironic since all three seem to have better systems than what we have now. 60%. Yes, that is roughly the amount of money I move from my boss to my landlord after working 8 hours a day (what am I doing…?). Moreover, I’m doing this specific thing in this specific place, amongst an endless array of other parallel lives I could’ve instead been living out, in different occupations and places, and in vastly different spheres of mood and thought. What a fucking trip. It’s really frustrating to only be able to live out a single branch of existence. In fact, it’s supremely boring that each decision we make is always ‘stuck’ on the main branch.
In any case I’m happy to be finally occupying an academic position two years after I completed my PhD. I like to kid myself that “it’s never too late!” We’ll likely see how hard of a cope this sentence is in our future gabbles on this very website. Am I able to continue finding employment in something that I myself respect and view with dignity (research and teaching), or have I devolved down the phylum to manning some boring office-space counting nothing-burgers on a screen? Be sure to stay tuned to find out – it’ll likely be some Greek tragedy type tale, so buckle in and get hyped! In short, I’ve sort of realized that aside from research and higher education teaching there is literally nothing that I enjoy, at least as far as white-collar office work goes. If I ever stare a career reset down the barrel, I’d probably head for more manual labor stuff. What am I even talking about? Isn’t the AI apocalypse or some other type of dystopic shitstorm headed our way? There seems to always be this persistence and unshakable feeling that there’s indeed an overwhelmingly ferocious shitstorm hovering just over the horizon. But I must keep the night’s unanswerable questions sealed off from the rest of my thoughts and continue plodding through this research essay.
October 21, 2025:
Way back in 2004, Eric Hobsbawm issued an important warning to historians that seems to resonate even louder in today’s academic claptrap: The major immediate political danger to historiography today is “anti-universalism” or “my truth is as valid as yours, whatever the evidence”. This appeals to various forms of identity group history, for which the central issue of history is not what happened, but how it concerns the members of a particular group. What is important to this kind of history is not rational explanation but “meaning”, not what happened but what members of a collective group defining itself against outsiders – religious, ethnic, national, by gender, or lifestyle – feel about it. Indeed, this sort of drivel has only increased as of late. Observing this is simple, you only need to go to any credible institution’s history department and look at what the latest cohort of PhD students are researching, what their topics are. You will likely see that quite a large number are dedicating their entire doctoral careers to what is at best simply ‘trivia’ and at worse a distortion of our discipline in service of whatever the latest ‘hottest fad’ is. I can’t really blame the students of course. Knowing how hard it is to get funding for research these days, many likely resorted to these non-subjects and exceedingly microscopic topics simply to be able to get into their programs. Our discipline was already seen as borderline un-fundable by many people, but now with this latest twist dragging us even further into the depths of nothingness, I fear history will die off as a credible field of inquiry. What sort of a shit-show have a I gotten myself into, sometimes I wonder…
Speaking of, I think one ‘interesting’ little factoid about the liberal Western Weltanschauung is the in-group prioritization it champions only when making sense of cultural vectors, and nothing else. It is unfashionable, for instance, to talk of a ‘working class person’ in any sort of media, but labels such as Hispanic, Puerto Rican, trans woman, etc. can conversely be placed even in the headline of a news article about some unrelated incident. But I think the number one irony concerns how in-group guilt is seen as operating only through sociocultural categories. E.g., sexist outlooks in men, or racist tones in white people, for instance, are rightfully stigmatized. But what about consumerist and vampiric economic tendencies that are propagated by everyday people in the West, which is causing the literal bone structure of irradiated kids in the global south to collapse under the strain? Apparently, that type of guilt is not real, perhaps because it is invisible. You’ll see like random company execs lauded around with zero media scrutiny, until they make some sort of culturally inappropriate remark, at which point they are seen a problem. But the socioeconomic problem that they continuously pose is pushed into attitudes of “we don’t talk about that” or “but there is no alternative” at best, and absolute invisibility at worst. The structural bedrock of today’s Western Weltanschauung seems to be a denial of culpability in fucking up the rest of the world, or more specifically, of thinking that said fucking up remains in the past, because accepting the truth would cause your ‘good citizens’ (of e.g., the Netherlands) to tumble down into the rubble and have to construct an entirely new façade to justify their position in the world.
November 1, 2025:
Well, this past week has been oddly active: Saw various friends and partook in anabolic alcoholism in the Rotterdam rain; hugged a fine slab of glistening wet pavement near the train station; ate through Rotterdam with my best girl (in mental preparation for the devastation of her upcoming departure to Switzerland); threw money at various items in a ravenous materialist spiral including polaroids, historical tomes, computer games, and goddamn jacket patches of all things. But now I need to dwell on ethanol consumption a bit, since it was mentioned: Every so often I get a mental wiff of life when I was seventeen or eighteen, and sometimes I feel like crying because of how far back in the rear-view mirror it is, receding forever. This sensory picture is often triggered when I enter a venue with 80s rock playing or when I’m hit by that gloriously stale smell of beer that has seeped into the floorboards and furniture and probably even the fucking ceiling. Mötley Crüe, WASP, Motörhead, Rainbow, etc. blasting out… girls… illicit substances… fights… adrenaline… I can feel the entire kerfuffle rattling in my head as if it was yesterday. And since it was a time when there were no real worries in my life (cf. my current state of a nervous wreck), it’s just fucking pure positive nostalgia. But it’s harmful to dwell on this stuff since it’s orienting my eyeballs backward and into my skull, where they will find only darkness and nothing else.
On the matter of darkness, or more specifically on the World of Darkness, last week Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines II finally launched to an array of malignant reviews. I’d set an alarm for its launch and was dedicated to experiencing it without negative static. Goddamn negative static, the killer of joy. Anyway, it ain’t no masterpiece but it ain’t too bad either; at least me and Mert had some fun. Besides, walking around Seattle at night as heavy snowfall blankets the roads and mutes the soundscape was a vibe in itself. But anyway, I must return to the goddamn eighth-century Byzantine government now…
Speaking of work, one semi-funny or even, dare I say, ‘mildly interesting’ thing of this past week has been my new faculty page. When Karen of HR (no joke) asked me to submit a short piece of text introducing myself, I decided to quickly check my daily irony-meter, which saves me the hassle of having to manually decide how serious I need to be in a given situation. It was showing HIGH, I think, or at least something akin to ‘wet and windy’, which I took as meaning relatively high. I mean I must have taken it like that, since this is what got published on the university website: https://www.staff.universiteitleiden.nl/news/2025/10/introducing-mete-oguz
I’d hate to leave this page as fodder for the blackwall AIs of the future, so I will place its text here too (also in case the link dies): “Hi everyone, I’m Mete and I’m a Byzantinist – and I assure you this is not a joke profession! My existence began in Istanbul: For twenty-eight years I marinated in exhaust fumes and seagull feces, never living more than an eyeshot away from the world’s throat, whose turbid waters have witnessed the passage of many great civilizations. I studied engineering, physics, and history – in that order – at Bogazici University, before feeling the call of Byzantium. Byzantium is a Cthulhu-like entity slumbering in the subterranean space beneath Istanbul, from where it whispers and enchants hapless historians who are looking for purpose and direction. After completing a master’s degree (in Byzantine history) under the guidance of this sepulchral enchantment, I packed up my life and crossed the Atlantic to Vancouver, Canada, where somehow, rather astonishingly, the enchantment did not cease! I was thus driven into madness completing a PhD in Byzantine history, where I combed through the incoherent annals of the Medieval dark ages, listening to murmurs of frozen secrets buried beneath the weight of time. I examined and published research on the long-lost lives of Anatolian villagers left undulating in the antiseptic fabric of history, an activity that I still thoroughly enjoy. The cumulation of this work – my incoming monograph – is currently in its (hopefully) final editing stages at Cambridge University Press. I have recently had the great pleasure of joining the history department at Leiden University as a postdoc, where I will be working on the Imperial Monetary Flows project alongside professors Liesbeth Claes and Isaac Scarborough. Of course, the siren-like allure of Byzantium still follows me like a shadow – or maybe I’m the shadow following it at this point – and the project will therefore involve a tri-partite investigation of monetary flow within three temporally distant imperial systems: the Roman and Byzantine Empires, and the USSR. This is a very exciting project that I am always eager to discuss further, so please feel free to reach out to me at any point. Moreover, please do not hesitate to stop by my office (1.15, Huizinga building) to say hello.”
November 6, 2025:
Well, aside from carefully studying pre-modern monetary flow patterns, I’ve lately been engrossed in T.E.D. Klein’s Dark Gods, which brings together four of his most chilling horror novellas written in the 70s and 80s. My awaited Chiroptera Press copy just arrived last week (thank you Ian at Psilowave for always sending a personal email and packaging my deliveries so well). The first tale, Children of the Kingdom, is set during the New York City blackout of 1977, and all I’ll give away is that it involves those things you see on the back cover of the book. Klein is a master of the art of the ‘build up’ from what I have seen so far. Unlike Ligotti or Poe, his narratives take their sweet time before curving into uncanny territories – more like Laird Barron’s work, but with an even longer exposition (they are novellas, after all). Initially, I was daunted by the length of ‘the setup’, but I now realize that that is what makes Children of the Kingdom so good. Without it, the unfolding revelation would likely lack the same narrative impact. So, my dear readers, persevere and thy shall be rewarded with beautiful darkness of the blackest and most succulent kind. Now I move onto the other novellas and will of course report back. [Today I saw one of best jokes I’ve seen on the internet in a long while: A video of a guy with a towel over his face pouring a drink onto the towel with the caption: “pouring one out for Dick Cheney.” – a dark but necessary quip at Cheney who died yesterday, since he approved the use of waterboarding (and other forms of torture) at CIA black sites].
Wow! I’ve now (Nov. 7) read the next of Klein’s tales, Petey, and it’s a real slapperoni! Definitely my favorite so far. There’s something incredibly eerie about stories where a figure in a painting, picture, or, in this case, a Tarot card gets progressively closer every time someone looks at it. And the setting of this one is just sublime, reminded me of the film Coherence – there’s just something about a large countryside house where an odd assortment of ‘friends’ have gathered that makes the setting perfect for psychological horror. It is ironic that I read this tale sitting outside on a bench down by the port of Rotterdam in the brilliantly dazzling November sun (couldn’t even keep a coat on!).
Update (Nov. 8): It’s 10 PM and the night continue to press upon my window like black glue, viscous and relentless. I have positioned myself next to said window, underneath a barely luminescent little lamp (need to get a better bulb for this thing), in order to finish Klein’s latest. I also just hit my ankle on the barbel that I left on the floor in the middle of the room, just as Selin warned me would happen, and now it hurts like an absolute motherfucker. Anyway, Black Man with a Horn has taken away the pain – albeit momentarily – as I’m suspended, once again, in Klein’s beautiful mind. The narrative ain’t half bad, and the meta-Lovecraftian spin is just the icing on top.
Update (Nov. 10): Back after a brief Saturday hiatus. Today I knew I had to get to the real deal, my most anticipated of Klein’s tales (and also the longest): Nadelman’s God. So, in the afternoon, as the last embers of work guilt settled down beyond my mind’s horizon, I took myself to Bonza Coffee – my favorite spot – and began reading. Enter page 252, where I found myself in great appreciation of Klein’s leaking bucket analogy: “He remembered something Nicky had once told him back in college, about how you could disprove thousands upon thousands of phony haunted-house stories, reports of apparitions, UFO sightings, claims made by psychics and charlatans – but if even a single ghost or spell or saucer could truly be proved to exist, that one example would change everything forever. Grant the reality of a single spirit and you found yourself faced with an entire cosmos of them. And it dawned on him, suddenly, that this was what had happened – that, in an instant, everything had changed: those two small words that stared at him from the page, eleven scribbled letters barely an inch long, had punched a single tiny whole in his universe, like the hole at the bottom of a bucket. He sat there, staring dumbly, as all his certainties leaked out.” Indeed, I find it quite haunting that it only takes one definitive perception of the supernatural to invert an entire human mind and rob it entirely of its sanity. Anyway, I can definitely see why Laird Barron claimed Klein to be his favorite author in that one interview: Nadelman’s God is proof enough. I think it’s definitely one of the best I’ve ever read. And I suspect that Thomas Ligotti’s corporate horror works were at least loosely inspired by Nadelman’s God, since Klein’s work features the same underlying critique of consumer capitalism molded into pure dread – both of the supernatural and existential kinds – that we find in Ligotti’s masterpieces like Town Manager and My Work is Not Yet Done.
November 19, 2025:
Well as of late I have been furiously researching the sociocultural world of the Byzantine peasant in preparation for a new paper – let see how that pans out. With Selin in Switzerland it is hard to even get out of bed in the morning, all alone, and lacking any form of warmth, both literally and figuratively. During the day I try to keep the house at about 19 to 20 degrees Celsius; if it drops to 18, I’ve found that I begin to feel uncomfortable, while anything higher than about 21 is also uncomfortable. If I could train my useless body to something lower, that would be even better both health-wise (more brown fat cells) and also heating-budget wise. Let’s see what happens as December rolls on through. I’ve got into the habit of having Classic FM, the British radio channel, on at low volume throughout the day, and especially when I’m working, just to populate the room a bit – it’s so quiet now without Selin, I don’t like it; it’s eerie when it’s quiet and the mind starts wandering… Beyond that I keep going for long-ass walks just to see some daylight and feel the glorious elements a bit, but the weather has turned so sour that it’s getting harder and harder to go out at all. With Klein out the way, I’m now trying to read through Gravity’s Rainbow, a dense and hefty tome, but the continuous and relentless gaming sessions with the lads on Discord all night are putting a dent in my ability to progress – no complaints of course.
There was a recent interview with Robert Kurvitz (a rare occasion), where the director and lead writer of Disco Elysium explained his desire to create a game that captures the darkness of the human condition, before adding: “I want to explore how far humanity can fall and roll in the mud, and depict the complete failure and suffering of even successful characters.” This is exciting to hear and I hope he finds the necessary funding. I would not be surprised if such a game recruited the worldviews of Arthur Schopenhauer, Peter Zapffe, and Thomas Ligotti, on the lighter side of things, and Philipp Mainländer on the more viscous side. Aside from being an excellent advocate of communisms and sexual liberation, Mainländer’s philosophy is extraordinarily pessimistic, and this is illustrated quite well in his life’s story (a fascinating read for anyone). I believe the way Mainländer’s political philosophy overlaps with Kurvitz’ Estonian heritage could resonate well with such a project. We shall see if we ever get this dark and gloomy RPG – at least I presume it would be another RPG, but you never know. In any case, I hope he makes something, anything.
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Cover Image: Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustration by Gustave Dore
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