Friday, January 31, 2014

Double Edged Sword...

"And in no books were
they written so the scribes could
be smitten by the double-edge sword
protruding from my mouth now the
King of the North and the Prince of
the South speaks words unheard by
men but yet uttered by the Djinn..."

(Excerpt from poem "Foundation," by Obsidian c.1991)

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Moving on from Facebook Post...

Ok, folks, I've finally come to the conclusion of posting my excerpts from my book: "Hobo Handbook: Memoirs of a Homeless Poet in New York." I want to thank all of you for your encouragement and support, especially in regards to the many comments rendered in connection with it.

I'm glad you enjoyed perusing them as much a I did in creating them. Now, wish me luck as I proceed to take these excerpts to the mainstream media. Whew! I'm sweating bullets already!

-Sincerely
Daniel Canada a.k.a Obsidian with these posts.

(Here's the facebook page, for those of you who hadn't the chance to read the post-Note: these are much earlier post. So you'll have to scroll down to reach them. Good luck!):

https://www.facebook.com/daniel.canada3

Saturday, January 25, 2014

About Dinkles...


About Dinkles



LISTEN UP!
I'll try my best to make this as short & painless as possible.

As you might know, I'm not very big into cats. I love all animals in general. However, years ago I had a girlfriend who was very into cats-she had 9 at one time! Anyway, she happens to have rescued a pair of kittens. One female, one male, about the same age. The male she named Pepper. The female, Sweety. As time progressed the kittens grew older and started fucking, as all of us animals do. As a consequence Sweety gave birth to a WHOLE litter of tiny, little, kittens.

Since this particular girlfriend came from a challenged family, and didn't necessarily want to have children (at least not with me) we called this new litter "our children."

But the story gets worst.

In the litter of newborns was a very teeny-weeney kitten, she named "Lefty"-I renamed her "Dinky," since she was so small & I later changed it to "Dingles" (In fact, I renamed ALL of her cats-because that's what I do and I'm good like that). Getting back to the point. This poor, teeny-weeney, kitten was having some serious after-birth problems, and unlike the rest of her siblings, wouldn't crawl over to her mother to receive milk from her breast. It eventually deteriorated to the point where she stopped moving and just laid there, at a distance from the rest of the litter, in a tiny ball. We watched little "Dinkles" ominously as she eventually gave up, stop breathing and died.

Needless to say, my ex-girlfriend had a hissy fit and damned near lost her mind all up in the house. And we were discussing ways to safely dispose of "Dinkles" little body, in a respectful way, without drawing too much unwarranted attention from her nosy neighbors. Hours later when we returned to the litter from searching out a decent burial site, a miracle happened! Little "Dinkles" had, like the biblical Lazarus, reawakened from the dead and had managed to crawl over to her mother, shoved her way around her greedy little brothers and sisters, and began partaking of her portion of mother's milk. We were astonished at this sudden turn of events and really didn't have an explanation for this revival.

As the years progressed, my girlfriend and I broke up and began hungrily scouring the earth for another or better lover, but remained life-long friends. I would, from time-to-time, come over and visit her and the much older, healthy, cats-all 9 of them! And, of course, I would visit the exuberant and vivacious "Dinkles," who had the humorous predilection of running up to walls, jumping up and performing back flips from it, the likes of which would make Olympic judges proud.

"Dinkles" became my little girl. Needless to say, even though cats have 9 lives, after 15 years of having fun and finally getting cancer, "Dinkles" said she had enough of clowning around on planet earth, for us stupid human's enjoyment and departed to the astral world.

Being that I was never much of a cat lover-like my ex-girlfriend-I was surprised how affected I was by all of this.

I beg your pardon.

What's the point I'm trying to make, you ask?

Right.

Here's my point:

My brother, Gregory a.k.a Hobobo and I, after much deliberation, decided to start up a publishing company, "Murduk Publishing, Inc.," with the view to self-publishing a long-written historical fiction novel, entitled "Hegemony," through the famous crowdfunding site call Kickstarter. Being the poor-ass blokes that we are-and many of you know our story of how we fought to rise out of living on the streets, as homeless poets & co-hosts-we made an effort to supplicate you for your generous support.

This could've come in the form of anything from $1.00 to as much as $150.00. Now, we understand that most folks in the artist & poetry community are "struggling artist," as are we; so we're NOT demanding anyone to do anything, which would put themselves in financial jeopardy. Needless to say, we are running out of time to raise such funds, in order to see our dream reach fruition, and are now rushing headlong into the abyss of extinction.

We are not mad at anyone for this. The fault is our own.

However, we do appreciate the financial assistance we did receive from a number of friends & acquaintances in the community-and when we say we are grateful to you for your contributions, we mean it from the very bottom of our hearts. We are NOT ingrates or arrogant.

So, as I promised, I'm going to make this "Short and to the Point." (Yeah right!) In less than 20 days we will fail to reach our projected goals of raising $45,000 (that's correct-that's how much it cost to properly publish & market a book) and will have to descend into the chasm of the earth and make friends with the subterranean darkness of the void.

Note: We ARE NOT afraid of failure! We have PHD's in failure & Masters degrees in overcoming disappointments.

Nonetheless, like "Dinkles" we WILL experience a resurgence of life, learn from our mistakes and reorganize another another form, with a new invigorated strategy that shall meet our goal. And like little "Dinkles" we will be doing back flips on walls, when we finally are met with this certain success.

For those of you who supported us financially in our campaign, we think you sincerely from the depths of our souls. For those of you who even took the time to offer us words of encouragement along the way, on Facebook, we thank you profusely from the bottom of our hearts. Sometimes simple words can prove to be as inspiring as material wealth. For those of you who might've quietly hoped that we failed miserably, kindly remember the story of "Dinkles," and keep a handy supply of ointment available.

Because, like a rash, WE WILL BE BACK!



-Sincerely, Daniel Canada a.k.a Obsidian

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Updated Press Release...

Ok, folks. So here is the press release we just put out for our Kickstater campaign. Check it out & be sure to "Kick"!
-Daniel a.k.a Obsidian

Marduk Publications, Inc. Seeks Funding via Kickstarter to Publish Hegemony, a Historical fiction about Ancient Babylon and Assyria.


The archaic battle between great kings over the Fertile Crescent.
New York, NY, 17th Jan, 2014

Hegemony takes place in Mesopotamia, 3,000 years ago, when the dominion of nations over lesser cities was absolute, and the mighty, despotic, military machinery of the Assyrian empire ruled supreme.
The saga unfolds with the fledgling rise of opposition to the overbearing Assyrian empire, by the scattered tribes that would one day be known as the Babylonians.

This rebellion is begun by the Babylonian leader Nabopollassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar upon a string of small loyal Assyrian cities. The Babylonians then decide to further take on and overthrow greater Assyrian metropolises, such as the venerable stronghold of the city of Ashur, the very seat of the newly installed Assyrian king, Sin-shar-iskun.

Hegemony brings to life the charismatic individuals who shaped the ancient lands of the Middle East in their day. Marduk Publications feels that their stories deserve to be told today, that their lives were important, and that their struggle to break the Assyrian yoke is a lesson for everyone in every century, working to overthrow oppression and injustice.

Hegemony has taken ten years to complete after voluminous and meticulous research and is now in manuscript form of roughly 1,000 pages. Of course there is a great deal of editing and pruning needed to bring the work to publishable quality.

Marduk Publications needs to hire a team of professionals to edit, proofread, format, and design the book. From there they need to implement a marketing plan to reach the maximum audience of readers.

This would include press releases, webpage design, blog tours, social networking campaign and other mediums.

This project will only be funded if at least $45,000 is pledged by Thursday Feb 13, 8:52pm EST.

We the publishers ask and thank you for your generous support.

Kickstarter Page: http://kck.st/1cwudcO

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

INNA DAZE...

This is an old photo i found of when I used to co-host the Times Square Shout out with Hobobob...back in the days: We were reading poetry & drinking & smoking and performing comedy & drinking and smoking & having live musical performances & drinking & smoking & & well, reading poetry!

Clearly, we were having WAY too much fun in those days!
-Obsidian

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The Countdown Continues...

Day 7 & 23 more to go, in order to reach the goal for our kickstarter publishing project & I think I'm going to have a nervous breakdown! just kidding...No, seriously. Yikes!!
-Daniel Canada a.k.a. Obsidian

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1760160869/historical-fiction-about-ancient-babylon-and-assyr


Friday, January 17, 2014

Gratitude for a Project Support...

I can only feel a sense of gratitude to the 3 financial backers we have thus far, for our publishing project. Indeed the experience is a humbling one.
-Daniel Canada a.k.a Obsidian


(I encourage all to check out the site): 
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1760160869/historical-fiction-about-ancient-babylon-and-assyr