This is the Inkbottle...

I took the name "Haunted Ink" from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.  In Book I, chapter 7 (page 182, to be specific), Joyce begins a lengthy description of the place one of his characters/figures, Shem, retreats to in order to escape his nemesis, Shaun (his brother).  Joyce initially refers to this enclosure as "The house O'Shea or O'Shame, Quivapieno, known as the Haunted Inkbottle."  The "Inkbottle," as it turns out, is a rather nasty place and made even nastier once Shaun barricades his brother in, depriving him even of pen and paper to write with (Shem is the "writer" in this story).  So Shem resorts to drastic measures in this Haunted Inkbottle: he uses his own excrement as ink and his own body as paper.

I wrote an article about this section of Finnegans Wake (published in European Joyce Studies 10) and I've always enjoyed it.  It was in my head when I needed a domain name--hence Haunted Ink.  Of course, if there's one thing that the Internet does not have it's Ink, but the rich media possibilities of the web are sort of haunting, in the sense that words can talk and pictures can come alive.  If that sounds like too much of a stretch, keep in mind that I created hauntedink.com in 1995 when the web was still a baby.  Back then, hypertext itself was considered pretty spooky.  Besides, what better way to honor my favorite writer than to create my virtual identity around his shit-smeared hero!

So this is The Inkbottle, a journal intended as a way for me to get back into the world of music reviews and commentary.  A few years ago, I created Live in El Centro, 25 and Almaty or Bust (see Review Archive), three music-centered journals focusing largely on reviews of electronic, reggae/dub, and Central Asian music (my three passions at the time).  Those were interrupted in 2005 by a few events in my life (new job, relocation, and my father's death).  I've written sporadically since then.  I'm hoping that this new venture will reawaken my own creative juices and offer you, my wonderful visitors, some vague form of entertainment while you're waiting for the porn to finish downloading.

My plans?  There aren't any.  I may review music or films; I may ramble about my hatred of all things Bush; I may detail my life in a tiny corner of California; I may talk about my musical progress and my upcoming album Neolithic; I may write nonsense poetry or imitate Monty Python (badly); I may go into the minutiae of being a LA Angels fan.  Most likely, I'll do all this crap.  Here's hoping a tenth of it is readable.