Cold Open: We like dark tales here on Timesuck! Stories of murderous serial killers and accounts of cult leaders’ madness are some of our most popular episodes. I get it! Fear is fun when the danger isn’t right there in front of you. Edgar Allan Poe clearly loved a little fear. He put that primal emotion in so much of his literary works. Poe didn’t kill anyone or, at least according to most historians, go mad, but he loved to spin a dark tale. He’s considered the founder of the modern, psychological horror tale. Many literary giants of today consider him to be the world’s first true suspense author. He’s the inventor of the detective novel. The Godfather of the modern spooky mystery. “He wasn’t just a mystery/suspense writer,” adds the author many consider to be today’s master of suspense and horror, Stephen King. “He was the first.” And yet he toiled in poverty for the whole of his life. He was miserable for most of it.

“Poe is so ingrained in us—so deeply encoded into our cultural DNA—that we no longer recognize him,” says Louis Bayard, whose novel The Pale Blue Eye puts Poe at the center of a mystery during his days as a West Point cadet. “And yet whenever we write a mystery, whenever we write horror, whenever we write science fiction—whenever we write about obsession—we’re following in his tracks.”

I like that thought about no longer even recognizing the influence Poe has over us. We are all the sums of our influences but we often don’t realize who those influences are. I’ll use myself as an example.

I knew very little about Poe before this past week but now it’s clear to me that he’s influenced me a lot as.. I’m fascinated by the world around us, but, more with the dark side of human nature than the uplifting. I’m guessing you might be too. The first author I fell in love with as a kid, the man who sent me riding my bike to the library time and time again, reading every book they had that he’d written, as fast as I could - the man who sent me running to my mom’s room in the middle of the night because I was scared half to death, tortured by my own imagination, was Stephen King. And there’s a good chance there would be no Stephen King had there not been an Edgar Allan Poe. At least not the Stephen King we know and the one I still love. And, had there not been a Stephen King, there might not be the me you know. Maybe I wouldn’t have become so attracted to horror during those important, critical, developmental years. Maybe my comedy wouldn’t be so dark and inappropriate. Maybe all of my jokes would be about the lighter side of life? Ugh. That sounds so fucking boring and terrible! No dead squirrel puppet jokes? No longing for the violent deaths of inconsiderate strangers? Sounds boring.

So let’s head back to the source, or at least to one of the primary sources, for much of our current relationship with horror and darkness. Let’s head to the troubled early and mid-nineteenth century life - the impoverished life of struggle and death, led by “the Raven”, Edgar Allan Poe.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO

I. Welcome! A. Happy Friday Timesuckers! Happy June! It’s bonus time! Hope you had a refreshing Memorial Day weekend and are enjoying wrapping up a shorter work week! And if you’re at work, I hope this gives you a nice break. Work can wait! It’s time for Timesuck.

I’m Lord Suckitude, the Suckmaster General, the Master Sucker - Dan Cummins and YOU are listening to Timesuck. Welcome to the Cult of the Curious. Hail Nimrod! Hail Lucifina! Or, begone Lucifina if she’s giving you trouble! Praise Bojangles. Praise Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald! And I hope Pootie and Juju are well, I hope that Chikatilo is suffering, and I hope those Pineys are licking up all the puke they can eat.

B. Characters: Who are all these characters? I know many of you, newer to the show, have been asking that recently. So, at the end of today’s show I’ll provide a little summary of what the inside jokes are and where they originated to bring everyone up to speed. Not a bad idea to do that from time to time.

C. Pre-roll (Search n Shred): Today’s Timesuck is brought to you by the Search n’ Shred app, which has either just hit or will appearing very soon in the iTunes app and Google Play store. The brain behind this app is Timesucker and Space Lizard Josh Wagg!

What is Search n’ Shred? Let’s talk about it.

“Are you having a hard time finding a worthy new addition to your band? Or simply wanting to have a jam session with musicians like yourself? Look no further! Search n’ Shred App will help you find exactly what you have been looking for! Search n’ Shred helps you locate musicians nearby, and the right kind of musicians. You can narrow the search by genre, instruments, or styles. You can also buy and sell instruments and equipment through the app. To participate in this groundbreaking app, users create a profile that includes their location, age, music style, and profile picture. And it lets you chat with other users to learn more about them before you decide to meet up - even view their videos on their linked YouTube and SoundCloud accounts. You can also post events and attract the attention of various musicians in the surrounding area. So what are you waiting for music creators? Let us help you minimize your search time so you have more time to shred! Join this amazing community and download the Search n’ Shred App today.

D. Doing my first AMA coming up soon via WhatPods.com I was informed that this comprehensive podcast website has named Timesuck as one of the best comedy podcasts of 2018, so go fuck yourself a few angry reviewers on iTunes. Thanks to the overwhelming majority of you for the great reviews and ratings by the way. Almost at 4,000 which is amazing!

I will be hosting an AMA, an Ask Me Anything, for 90 minutes on June 5th at Whatpods dot com. That’s Tuesday, June 5th, at 4:30 PM EST, 1:30 PM PST, for 90 minutes. The live link for your AMA is https://whatpods.com/ama/timesuck/ I will include that link in today’s episode description. You can also rate Timesuck on Whatpods so people can find the show on their platform by following another link I will provide in the episode description. CLICK HERE TO RATE THE SHOW: https://whatpods.com/podcasts/timesuck-with-dan- cummins/

You have to make a Whatpods account to leave questions, so please head to Whatpods dot com before hand to sign up.

E. Open house: (Describe how it went) The guys from sweetboxdelivery.com stopped by with custom Timesuck Custom Cookies and pizza bagels. These guys are awesome. They’re Timesuckers. They deliver within a 100 miles of Spokane. And they deliver all kinds of goodies! Bagels, stuffed bagels,

F. Sale: Thanks to everyone for taking advantage of the Memorial Day sale and wiping out a lot of the store’s goodies. I will have new Danger Brain merch I’m very excited about to talk about soon.

In the Suck Dungeon again today, recording in advance of the Tempe, Arizona dates with the Reverend Doctor Josh Krell and Queen of the Suck Lynze Cummins.

G. Tour: Lynze and I are in Phoenix right now if you’re listening to this Friday the 1st. I’ll be at the Tempe Improve tonight and tomorrow night, with new Flat Earth Tour jokes and special guest Gareth Reynolds from the Dollop Podcast.

Next week, our nation’s capitol! DC in D.C.! Flat Earth jokes getting told at the DC Draft house June 8th and 9th.

June 15-16th Flat Earth mockery headed to the Funny Bone in Des Moines, Iowa.

July 12-14th, the Orlando Improv. Live podcast on the 15th.

Comedy Store in La Jolla, July 20-22nd.

Dayton, Ohio Funnybone July 27-28th.

More tour dates at www.dancummins.tv.

H. And now, I present to you… Edgar Allan Poe.

PAUSE INTERLUDE

II. Intro A. Origins of horror: Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. Let’s be clear about that. He did invent the slinky. And if not for the slinky, he would’ve never written The Raven. Bet you didn’t know that. I’m almost positive it’s not true since I just made it up.

But seriously - Poe didn’t invent literary horror. Homer’s Odyssey, written sometime between the 12th and 8th century BCE, one of the world’s oldest known examples of literature, records Odysseus’s confrontations with several witches, including Circe. And while it was not intended to be a scary story, it undoubtedly scared numerous readers.

The Bible’s First Book of Samuel, written in the 5th or 6th century BCE, (Samuel 28, 3-25) reports Saul’s consultation with the Witch of Endor. All these ancient witches doing their witchery! They were probably witches in the same sense that Joan of Arc was - innocent women who didn’t do what the men of that time told them to do.

The Ancient Greeks had more than witches to deal with. They also wrote several accounts of ancient vampires, called, among other names, the Strigoi for you The Strain fans. We touched on that in that Vlad Dracula Bonus Suck last year.

Shakespeare didn’t write traditional horror, BUT, he did intend to scare his audiences from time to time during some of his dramas, such as Macbeth, where the ghost of Banquo (Ban·quo), the Scottish man Macbeth paid assassins to kill, haunts Macbeth at a banquet. There are also three creepy witches in Macbeth. Those damn unruly women showing up again!

To reference that Vlad the Impaler Suck again, there were scary tales of a bloodthirsty madman based upon Vlad the Impaler circulated around central, northern, and southeastern Europe as early as the end of the 15th century. But still, these tales weren’t horror stories in the modern sense. They were tales of “this bad man did these naughty things to these poor people.” There were the Krampus tales, tales of a half-goat/half demon, as we learned way back in the Krampus Suck, Timesuck 14 - that went back to Germanic, pre-Christian folklore. Tales of a monster who would eat naughty Bavarian children during the end-of-summer harvest celebrations.

But again - also not horror stories in the modern sense. It was folklore. More of, “this horrible creature does this and that awful thing and rips off this and stabs you here and has horns and fangs and comes from Hell and if you’re not careful - he’s gonna get YOU!!!!”

The horrible acts are committed upon characters you don’t really know or care about. They’re wooden and one dimensional. The monster eats children but you don’t know who these children are. The monster attacks a family but you have no personal investment in this family as a reader. Sucks that a family got eaten, but, who is this family anyway? Are they like your family? Maybe. Maybe not. You don’t know them.

In modern horror, when it’s done at its best, you know the characters very well. The better you know them, the more closely connected you feel to them, the scarier it is when bad shit happens to them. It’s scarier because, since they’ve been more fleshed out, they’re more real and thus more relatable. And you’re now more able to see yourself in the story. And there’s nothing scarier than imagining that it could be you that all the bad shit is happening to. It’s all fun and games until the monster comes after you or someone like you.

A modern Krampus-y type tale would be more personal. It might be a story about some guy with a family and bills and he’s getting in financial trouble and he’s gonna lose the family home and he doesn’t know how to feed his four kids. And you spend forty pages getting to know this family. You start to like them. The dad works hard. So does the mom. They have problems similar to problems you have or have had. You relate to them. Maybe one of the kids is super sick with soaring medical bills that are going to financially ruin him and one night while he’s alone in his office, half-drunk feeling sorry for himself, in a weak moment he secretly thinks it would be better for his sick child to die instead of jeopardizing the whole family, and then he hears a creepy voice saying, (monster voice) “I’ll take him. Give him to me and I’ll set you free.”

And then some Krampus-y demon appears and offers the man a life of ease, fortune, and good health for his family - for all of his family except the one child who’s sick. That child’s soul he’ll take as payment for the good of the rest. And in a weak moment the father accepts the deal.

But then he immediately regrets it and consults an old Romani woman who knows how to break a deal with Krampus. How did he know where to find a Romani woman who knows about shit like this? Why does she have to be Romani? Who the fuck knows? This isn’t a well thought out script but I’m kinda getting into it.

But when the man tries to break the deal with the demon, in a fit of rage, Krampus appears and kills the gypsy woman before some sort of creepy, sitting around a pentagram of candles in a dark room revocation ceremony can be completed. Before she dies she warns the man that now the Krampus will now come for his whole family. (creepy gypsy woman voice) “He’s coming! He’s coming for you all! All your souls are lost!”

And then the rest of the tale, the Krampus picks off members of the man’s family, one by one, until only the father and the sick child are left alive. And then, Krampus takes even the last child in front of the father. And then the monster lets the man live with the memory of the deal he made.”

Look. I know that's not some great horror movie synopsis. I literally made it up in five minutes. I’m not saying it’s even terrifying but it illustrates the difference between modern and ancient horror tales. And I wouldn’t of known how to make that shit up had it not been for Edgar Allan Poe.

Now. To be fair. He didn’t usher the genres of horror, mystery, and suspense into the modern style out of thin air. He didn’t live in a vacuum. Others shortly before his time were already writing spooky, more modern type tales, such as Daniel Defoe, an author not known for horror. He’s most known for writing Robinson Crusoe, a book second only to the Bible in the number of languages it’s been translated into.

In the late 17th century and early 18th century, popular English writer Daniel Defoe penned a number of stories that are today classed as horror tales. The Apparition of Mrs. Veal was published anonymously in 1706, but has been attributed to Defoe.

It tells the story of a Canterbury resident, Mrs. Bargrave, who is visited by Mrs. Veal, an old friend and former neighbor who says that she would like to catch up before departing for a journey. The pair discuss books on death and friendship before Mrs. Veal asks for her friend to write a letter to her brother concerning a number of gifts she would like him to make. She discloses that her locked cabinet contains a purse filled with gold. After a long visit, Mrs. Veal says that she must be going and walks away, watched by Mrs. Bargrave until she is out of sight. Later that day, Mrs. Bargrave is told that Mrs. Veal died the day before. DUH DUH DUHHHHH!!!!!

In 1764, English art historian, politician, and author Horace Walpole basically invented the genre of Gothic horror when he published the Castle of Otranto. Walpole combined medieval ideas about the supernatural with the realism of the modern novel and created an atmosphere of terror, a world in which anything could happen and often did: A giant helmet falls from the heavens, crushing Conrad on his wedding day; immense limbs appear within the castle itself; mysterious blood flows; and a hodgepodge of other bogeymen wander in and out of the tale.

But even in these tales, you didn’t really get into the mind of the main character or characters. You didn’t sit and stew in the dark recesses of their minds. The true use of psychological horror through first-person narration - it just hadn’t been done in the way Poe did it before - and it would inspire other writers such as Ambrose Bierce and H.P. Lovecraft to write horror stories, who would inspire still others, leading us to Stephen King and other authors of today.

Poe used the main character as a first-person narrator to heighten suspense and draw readers into the character’s situations, giving readers an intimate view of the character’s psyche, providing an additional layer of realism to the tale, allowing the readers to feel more connected to—and therefore more afraid for—the primary characters. We’re scared when they’re scared!

Again, with modern horror - we feel their fear. In Stephen King’s It, we experience Pennywise through the lives of the kids the piece of shit Spider Clown terrorizes and/or murders. If that was a spoiler alert for you, where the fuck have you been for the last twenty years?

The famous gothic horror novel Frankenstein was written just before Poe’s time as an author. It was written by Mary Shelley and published in 1818 when Poe was only nine years old. This tale comes close to the direction of modern horror, but still falls short compared to Poe. It’s told primarily through the narration of a character, Robert Watson, who never deals directly with that monster. Watson is the captain of a North Pole–bound ship the becomes trapped between sheets of ice after his crew sees a dogsled being driven by some gigantic figure, and then a few hours later, the crew finds a nearly frozen man named Victor Frankenstein, who tells his tale of creating a monster to Robert, who relays the story via letters to his sister, Margaret Walton Saville.

The horror of this story comes from the reader’s discovery that a monster has been brought to life by a scientist. However, the monster presents no real danger to the primary character. It’s one man telling another man stories about a monster that escaped, and then that man writing letters about this monster story to his sister, and this is generally how the reader learns of the monster - through these letters. Poe took you directly inside the head of either the monster or the man tormented by the monster, which was, and is, arguably, scarier. Such a small change and yet so revolutionary.

One of Poe’s most masterful uses of first-person narration in a horror story is “The Tell-Tale Heart.” At the outset of the story, the paranoid narrator hastens to assure the reader that he is of sound mind and body. However, as the story progresses, the reader witnesses the narrator’s mind unravel as it is wracked with paranoia. At the height of the man’s distress, the reader follows his emotions as they build inside his mind:

“I talked still faster and louder. And the sound, too, became louder. It was a quick, low, soft sound, like the sound of a clock heard through a wall, a sound I knew well. Louder it became, and louder. Why did the men not go? Louder, louder.”

The reader doesn’t know whether to believe that it is impossible for a dead man’s heart to continue beating, or whether to trust the narrator’s passionate insistence that he is sane and that these events truly happened exactly the way that he relates them. This uncertainty and mystery adds another layer of terror to the story, a fear of uncertainty and of the devolving mental state of the narrator. You wonder if you or someone around you could have their mind unravel in the same way.

In addition to being inventive creatively, the life Poe chose to lead was in itself inventive. He tried to make a living purely as an author of fiction which was an insane proposition in the early 19th century. It just hadn’t been done before in America.

I know that probably sounds crazy now. The successful authors we know - the ones who are household names like Poe was at his height - make SO much money. SO MUCH FUCKING MONEY. Think about Stephen King. King makes, according to Forbes, about 40 million dollars a year. Forty million! A year. According to various web sources, he’s made about half-a-BILLION dollars in his literary career. James Patterson, according to Forbes, made $95 million in 2016. Can you imagine making 95 million dollars in one fucking year? Jesus Christ. You could buy two neighboring ocean front or lake front properties, tear down the homes, build a fucking custom compound, sport court, Infiniti pool, private dock, buy a custom speed boat, dream cars, and pay it all off. And then put the rest of the money in an account and pay all of your living expenses going forward off of most of the interest and still leave twenty or thirty million to set up future generations of your family to be wealthy. And that’s just one year’s income.

But back in the early 1800s, no one in America made that kind of living as a writer. No one made a living as a novelist at all, for a variety of reasons.

For one thing, US copyright laws were poorly enforced and varied from state to state. It was pretty easy to blatantly plagiarize someone else’s shit and get away with it so people did do that. It was also a chaotic time for printing, publishers popping up quickly and quickly going bankrupt, over and over again. And if a printer went bankrupt, the author didn’t get paid. Even if the printer stayed in business, author’s were universally given really shitty contracts. There just wasn’t the Barnes & Noble, Audible, Amazon book, local book store distribution infrastructure there is today. There was some money to be made in newspapers if you owned a successful one in New York City or Boston, but even then, there weren’t big national publishers making fortunes until the late 19th century after Edgar’s death, men like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

So, thanks to the times he lived in, Poe was only paid $9 for the original publication of the “The Raven”, a poem that made him famous shortly after it’s publication. That’s roughly $277 in today’s dollars. He was paid a total of $14 over the course of his lifetime for “The Raven”. About $425 in today’s dollars. One of the most famous literary works in American history made Poe enough money to pay one month’s rent in a shitty studio apartment in the bad part of a small, dying city. Damn. That is some classic starving artist shit and Poe is one of history’s classic examples of a starving artist.

I’m so fascinated by the relationship between art and money. It’s so fickle! Four of the movies Adam Sandler has made since 2015 have a 10% or less favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes - they are arguably, and I know very well that art is subjective, but, they are arguably terrible fucking movies. And yet he made 50 million dollars in 2017.

2015’s The Ridiculous Six from Sandler has a 0% favorable ratings from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Thirty-five critics affiliated with Rotten Tomatoes reviewed that movie and every fucking one of them hated it. Not a single critic thought it was worth a shit. But when it came out in 2016 it was the most streamed movie in Netflix’s history. 2010’s Grown Ups made over $162 million at the box office. Ten percent of 165 critics thought it was watchable. Ninety percent hated it. Sandler’s wealthy beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Poe didn’t even have enough money to buy a second coat for most of his adult life. Think about that! He didn’t even have two coat money. I’m guessing all of you listening could scrounge up enough loose change to buy yourself a second coat. Especially right now when coats are cheap as Hell because it isn’t coat season.

Poe was also a starving artist due to international copyright laws not existing when he did. If you, for example lived in the UK, you could just reprint an American author's book and not pay them a dime. Totally legal to do that. And it was done often. It happened a lot to Poe. He got big in Europe and never made a dime. How crazy is that!?! Can you imagine just being like, “Man, Royal Blood is pretty good. So is Muse. Solid shit Florence and the Machine. I’m gonna print up your stuff and sell it at my record store and never fucking pay you.”

If I suddenly found out I was huge in South Africa or the UK, selling hundreds of thousands of standup album downloads, I’d be stoked. If I then found out that some other asshole got to keep all of the money, I’d want to find out where they lived and murder them.

Poe earned only about a sum total of $6,200 for all the fiction her ever wrote. Total. That’s $191,087, adjusted for inflation, stretched out over a few decades.

He was a tortured artist who led a tortured artist’s life. Now, let’s examine that life in detail, with today’s Timesuck Timeline!

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE

III. Timesuck Timeline - The Life and Death of Edgar Allan Poe

A. January 19, 1809: Edgar was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born “Edgar Poe” - the middle name will come later and we’ll soon see how.

His parents were actors during an age when they didn’t make much either. So, the life of a struggling artist was not something totally foreign to him. It was in his DNA.

His father was twenty-five year-old David Poe, Jr., a man from Baltimore who trained to be a lawyer but abandoned his family’s wishes for him to actually work as a lawyer when he became a stage actor in Boston. He was an alleged alcoholic who abandoned his wife and child in 1810 when Edgar was only a year old and then is rumored to have died of consumption - tuberculosis - the following year in 1811. Consumption man! It would affect Edgar’s life greatly. We talked about TB at length in one of my favorite Sucks, the Doc Holliday suck, bonus episode 16.

His mother was twenty year old Elizabeth “Eliza” Arnold Poe, a British stage actress who had came to America to act. Eliza’s own mother had been a stage actress in London. Lot of artists in the family tree. And Eliza had debuted as an actress in Boston at the young age of nine. She toured up and down in New England and was well-received critically. A review in The Portland Herald said "Miss Arnold, in Miss Biddy, exceeded all praise..”

David and Eliza had another boy two years before Edgar was born, his older brother William Henry Leonard Poe. Edgar would grow to hate William for getting two middle names when he didn’t get any! Some literary scholars cite Edgar’s anger over this slight as his inspiration for writing The Raven. That’s nonsense. There is no mention of Edgar being mad about William, who actually went by Henry, getting two middle names while he got none. How great would that be though if that was specifically what fueled his career of writing dark tales.

(Edgar) “Why am I mad!?! Why am I so brooding and forlorn? Can you IMAGINE being born into the world with no middle name!?! Only to find out later that your older brother had not ONE but TWO middle names!

Can you understand the rage that would build inside of you when you realized that your parents had put literally three times the thought into your brother’s names as they had put into your own!?!

A boy cannot thrive on only one-thrice the love of his brother! Damn you Henry! Damn you William! Damn you Leonard! That is what truly Quoth the Raven! And he squawks it evermore! EVERMORE!!!! I changed it in the poem to “nevermore” because I WISH I could someday forget the PAIN of those torturous three names that HAUNT ME SO!!!”

B. 1810: In 1810, Edgar would have a little sister, Rosalie, shortly after his father abandoned his mother. Rosalie would also be given a middle name, McKenzie. So, she was loved twice as much as Edgar which still stung, but not as much as with Henry. Actually, her middle name would come later, for the same reason as Edgar’s. So, she was loved the same as Poe. C. December 8th, 1811: On December 8th, 1811, Edgar’s mother Eliza would die of consumption and orphan her three children. And sadly, all three would be separated and raised in different homes. At the age of two, tragedy has already entered Edgar’s life in a major way. Abandoned by his father, orphaned by his mother, and then separated from his siblings. No wonder he didn’t end up writing about sunshine, ponies, and living happily ever after.

Henry went to live with his paternal grandparents. His sister Rosalie was adopted by the McKenzie family, a family of some means. She’d be raised under the close care of her new guardian’s sister Miss McKenzie, a lady of elegance, manners, accomplishments, and was well educated. Rosalie was raised with a first class education and grew up into a high society position in accordance with her adoptive family’s means.

Correspondences between Poe and several relatives make it seem as though Rosalie and Edgar were not close. She may have been developmentally delayed or cognitively impaired which could help explain their distant relationship. Poe would have a fairly close relationship with Henry but hardly mentioned Rosalie in his letters and seemed to avoid the topic when others brought her up. She’d live the longest by far of the three siblings, reaching the age of sixty- four and dying on July 21, 1874.

Edgar was sent to live with John and Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia, who gave him the name Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar’s mom Eliza had died in Richmond and it seems that her acting friends in the area did they best they could to find homes for all three kids. I wasn’t able to determine if anyone knows exactly why David’s parents only took the oldest son. Maybe he smelled the best. Maybe Henry smelled like lavender, but Rosalie and Edgar smelled like sulphur and the rotten clump of hair and dirt and rancid food you sometimes pull out of a clogged kitchen sink pipe. On the one hand, it’s heartless, but, on the other hand, who wants a stinky fucking kid? I mean, that’s gonna really negatively affect the next nearly two decades of your life if your house smells like rotten eggs and rotten hair & food goo. How are you supposed to enjoy anything living in an open sewer pit? Sure, you could dip the kid in paint every few weeks, but now you’re a child abuser just because you prefer the smell of paint to sulfur. And since paint had lead back then, now you’re kid is brain damaged. So now, you got a slow, stinky kid. Even harder to raise. I guess what I’m trying to say is, maybe the grandparents had good reason not to take them at all. I guess what I’m REALLY trying to say is sometimes my kids stink and I get it. Monroe’s sweaty socks after softball practice might actually be able to strip paint off the walls.

In all seriousness, there are rumors that the youngest child, Rosalie, was not David’s based on when she was conceived and when David left the family. Maybe an affair was why he left. Maybe it was because acting critics loved his wife but hated him. He was not regarded as a talented actor and allegedly suffered from severe stage fright which makes you wonder why he even did it. Maybe David’s parents were only convinced that the oldest child was definitely their son. Maybe they only had the energy for one kid. Who knows? Based on later letters Edgar would write John Allan, it sounds like his grandparents considered taking him in as well but felt maybe John could give him a better life. I’m doing a lot of speculating now.

Back to the facts!

John and Frances Allan, the couple who took Edgar in, were childless and excited to have a toddler around the house. John initially was, anyways. Frances was reluctant but would come to adore Edgar. John was a Scottish immigrant and successful tobacco merchant who was not overly affectionate, expected Edgar to follow in his business footsteps, and was chronically disappointed in Edgar when he didn’t. Edgar seemed to have a close relationship with his mother Frances.

John Allan was born in Scotland. In 1794, at the age of 14, John moved to Richmond, Virginia, to live with his uncle who was a very successful merchant. John worked several years as a clerk for his uncle before he started his own business as a tobacco merchant. He married the “much admired” Frances Keeling Valentine. Edgar was well cared for in their home, provided a good education, and at most times treated as a member of the family. It was from the Allans that Edgar got his middle name. They christened him under the name "Edgar Allan Poe”. They’d never formally adopt him, so legally, his name remained Edgar Poe, but he’d go by Edgar A. Poe or Edgar Allan Poe.

And Edgar’s relationship with the Allens would be complicated. They were a different type of people than his birth parents were. His parents, even his dad, were big names amongst actors but actors weren’t held in high regard by high society.

In a way, it’s like his parents were really good carnies. Especially his mom who was a much more heralded actor than his father. His dad was just an average carnie. But, his mom, she was like, one of the best tilt a whirl operators on the Eastern Seaboard. And no one living in the gated communities gave a SHIT.

That thought makes me think there probably is some dude or some lady who really is super good at running and fixing up the tilt-a-whirl today. What a weird talent to have. I’d think you’d be proud of being like, the best at what you do. Unfortunately, what you do is viewed as pathetic by most of society.

(Ted) “Dude, is it true your mom is a carnie?”

(Becca’s Son) “‘Carnie’? Go fuck yourself Ted you arrogant, judgmental prick! My mom isn’t just some ‘carnie’. Becca “Silver Back” Lupenstein is one of THE most RESPECTED names in the entire Association of Mobile Entertainment Workers! She puts twice as much Tilt and three times as much Whirl as any other mobile entertaining joy machine employee in the biz!’

(Ted) “Jesus. Sorry, Pete. I had no idea. Hey. Why is her nickname, Silverback?”

(Becca’s Son) “She’s built like a fucking gorilla, Ted. Like a silver back fucking gorilla! You have anything else to say? ‘Cause I got elephant ears to move. They’re not gonna sell themselves”

Anywho!

Edgar’s biolgical parents were poor, artistic, and dramatic. His adoptive parents were rich, stoic, and business-minded. When Poe showed poetic talent as a young teen it was discouraged by John Allan rather than encouraged or nurtured. And yet he became an author anyway. Interesting argument for the nature side of the nature versus nurture parenting debate.

D. 1815: In 1815, when Poe was six, the Allan family went to Britain where Poe went to Irvine Old Grammar and Boarding School in Scotland.

E. 1816: In 1816, Poe rejoins his family in London where he studied at Manor House boarding school in Stoke Newington for the next four years. Based on letters sent from John Allan to Edgar’s school master, he seemed to be a good student at this time.

F. March 21, 1818: In a letter dated March 21, 1818, John writes: “Accept my thanks for the solicitude you have so kindly expressed about Edgar and the family. Edgar is a fine Boy and I have no reason to complain of his progress.” So far, things are good when Edgar is young, does as he’s told, and doesn’t live at home.

G. September 28, 1818: In a letter to his Uncle, dated September 28, 1818, John writes: “Edgar is growing wonderfully and enjoys a good reputation as both able and willing to receive instruction.” He’s a good boy!

H. 1820-22: Between 1820 and 1822, depending on which source you come across, the Allans and Edgar travelled back to Richmond, Virginia. And in 1823, Poe meets and falls in love with Jane Stith Standard, the mother of one his classmates. Not weird at all. He would later write his first real romantic love, Sarah Elmira Royster, that Jane was “the first purely ideal love of my soul.” He told Whitman that Jane was the inspiration for his first version of “To Helen”, a poem he named after her because she reminded him of Helen Of Troy.

Poe said that Stanard “was the truest, tenderest of the world’s most womanly souls, and an angel to my forlorned and darkened nature.’”

Multiple sources assert that Poe read her some of his early poems and that she gently critiqued him. Stanard was described as kind and hypersensitive, a woman who suffered bouts of ‘melancholia’ and was, near the end of her life, obviously mentally ill. And Poe adored her. And it isn’t believed that this was some sexual or romantic love. More of an adolescent crush. Poe was smitten with Jane and Jane thought Poe was sweet and Jane was kind to him when he was at odds with the Allans.

I. 1824: And then on April 28, 1824, when Poe was fifteen, Jane went insane and died of an unknown illness. Some scholars believe that consumption killed her. It’s just said in numerous sources that she suddenly became “very ill and died” after she “gradually went insane.”

After her death, Poe is said to have often visited her grave at Shockoe Hill Cemetery.

His relationship with his father seems to really sour around this time as evidenced by this letter from John to Henry Poe, Edgar’s brother who, although raised by Edgar’s grandparents, did keep in frequent contact with Edgar.

November 1, 1824

“Dear Henry,

I have just seen your letter […] to Edgar and am afflicted, that he has not written you. He has had little else to do for me he does nothing & seems quite miserable, sulky & ill-tempered to all the Family. How we have acted to produce this is beyond my conception—why I have put up so long with his conduct is little less wonderful. The boy possesses not a Spark of affection for us not a particle of gratitude for all my care and kindness towards him. I have given him a much superior Education than ever I received myself…”

So the good boy becomes the sullen teen. Man am I hoping to avoid the same fate with my two kids. Don’t be dicks all of a sudden when the hormones hit Kyler and Monroe.

J. 1825: Also in 1824, fifteen year old Poe meets Sarah Elmira Royster - his first real, romantic love. They become secretly engaged in 1825 when she was fifteen, and he was sixteen. She was a neighbor’s daughter whose father found Poe to be “unsuitable” and Sarah’s father intercepted letters from Poe to Sarah. She claimed later in life she received none of the letters. When she was seventeen, her relationship to Poe having been cut off by her father, she married a businessman Alexander Shelton.

“Ada” - a character in the first version of Poe’s poem Tamerlane, published in Poe’s first book of poems two years later in 1827 by a nineteen-year-old Poe, was inspired by Sarah Elmira Royster.

And this is not the last Poe would see of Sarah. More on her later.

K. 1826: In 1826, seventeen year-old Poe attends the newly opened University of Virginia in Charlottesville, just over seventy miles from Richmond. And the amount of help he was given to do so, or lack thereof, would cause quite a rift between him and John Allan.

John gave Edgar enough money to pay for school but nothing more. So, his classes and books were covered but his living expenses were not. His food was not. His clothes were not. Basically, if feels like John had come to view Edgar has ungrateful for the life he’d provided him, and he was done with Edgar. He’d honor the deal he’d likely made with Poe’s family but that was it. And there did seem to be some sort of deal made, based on another letter, this one written five years later from Edgar to John.

January 3, 1831

Sir,

Did I, when an infant, solicit your charity and protection, or was it of your own free will, that you volunteered your services in my behalf? It is well known to respectable individuals in Baltimore, and elsewhere, that my Grandfather (my natural protector at the time you interposed) was wealthy, and that I was his favorite grandchild—But the promises of adoption, and liberal education which you held forth to him in a letter which is now in possession of my family, induced him to resign all care of me into your hands. Under such circumstances, can it be said that I have no right to expect any thing at your hands? You may probably urge that you have given me a liberal education. I will leave the decision of that question to those who know how far liberal educations can be obtained in 8 months at the University of Va. Here you will say that it was my own fault that I did not return—You would not let me return because bills were presented you for payment which I never wished nor desired you to pay. Had you let me return, my reformation had been sure—as my conduct the last 3 months gave every reason to believe—and you would never have heard more of my extravagances. But I am not about to proclaim myself guilty of all that has been alleged against me, and which I have hitherto endured, simply because I was too proud to reply. I will boldly say that it was wholly and entirely your own mistaken parsimony that caused all the difficulties in which I was involved while at Charlottesville.

So, clearly John and Edgar had a complicated relationship. There was, or at least Edgar believed there was, some sort of deal made between his grandfather and John, which I gotta say, seems somewhat unlikely. If Poe really was his grandfather’s favorite, why didn’t his grandfather keep him to grow up with his older brother Henry? Poe was known to be an odd and imaginative young man, and one who romanticized his family. There could’ve of been a deal, OR…. he could’ve written a story in his head about how he was the family favorite and then John Allan went and fucked everything up. Easier to believe that lie than the possible truth which was that his grandparents might not have cared enough about him to raise him. Especially considering the fact that his father abandoned him. Who wants to believe that their father and their grandparents abandoned them?

The “extravagances” Edgar was referring to in the letter were most likely gambling debts. Poe turned to gambling to try and raise money for food, lodging, and clothing. At one point while attending the University of Virginia he was so poor he had taken to burning his furniture to stay warm.

Unable to continue at the University of Virginia, Poe left school after eight months. Unable to pay his gambling debts and John Allan refusing to pay them, Poe then fled the state in 1827 when he was eighteen, fearing getting stuck in a debtor’s prison, which was a real possibility.

1. Debtor’s Prisons: Up until the mid-19th century, you could be placed in special prisons specifically built for people who couldn’t pay their debts and you’d stay there until you either worked off your debt through labor or until someone paid the debt on your behalf. You could sit in there for years. How are you supposed to raise money to get yourself out of debt if you’re in prison? Well, that’s why these prisons eventually became outlawed. In many instances, you couldn’t unless the prison allowed you to leave the prison grounds or you were able to essentially sell yourself to someone who paid your way out and then you worked for them as an indentured servant until the debt was paid or you ran away from them. With a sentence of “until the debt is paid”, you could theoretically stay in for life.

L. 1827: To avoid this fate, Poe enlisted in the Army under the name Edgar A. Perry in Boston on May 26th, 1827. He claimed he was 22 instead of 18. He released his first book anonymously this same year, still worried about debtor’s prison. It was a 40-page collection of poetry titled Tamerlane and Other Poems, attributed with the byline "by a Bostonian". Only 50 copies were printed, and the book received virtually no attention.

Poe then served two years in the army before asking to be discharged in 1829. He revealed his real name and his circumstances to his commanding officer, a man named Lieutenant Howard, who said before being discharged he would have to reconcile with his adoptive father John Allan. Poe then did attempt to reconcile with John in late 1828 but John wasn’t interested in helping him out of the army anymore than he had been interested in paying off Edgar’s gambling debts. But then John’s wife and Edgar’s adoptive mother, Frances, the woman Poe called “ma” who did love him like a son, came down with a terrible and lingering unknown illness and died in early 1829. Possibly, once again, consumption although this is not definitive. Back then, people got sick and died a lot. There weren’t a lot of conclusive diagnoses with deaths related to illness, other than “they got sick”. “

(Family member) What kind of sick did she get doctor?”

(Doctor) “The kind that gits ya died, of course!”

(Family member) “Yes, but what disease was it?”

(Doctor) “The deadly kin ya damn fool!”

(Family member) “I know that she died of a disease you fucking moron! Which disease did she die of?”

(Doctor) “She died of a FATAL disease you uppity son of a bitch! Call me moron again - it’ll be dueling time!”

So now, at the age of twenty, Poe has had his father leave him, seen the relationship with his adoptive father deteriorate, had his mother die, seen his puppy-love friend’s mom die, and then had his adoptive mother die.

A small bit of good news came his way in early 1829. The death of Frances seemed to soften John and he agreed to write Edgar’s commanding officer a letter stating that they had reconciled their differences. Ad then Edgar, after securing another man to finish his enlisted term, was allowed to leave the army.

M. 1829: After leaving the army in 1829, the twenty-year old Poe travelled to Baltimore to stay for a time with his widowed Aunt, Maria Clemm and her seven year old daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm, Poe’s first cousin. Poe called her sis or “sissie” around this time. Hopefully, years later, he wouldn’t continue to do so. You’ll understand soon why I say that.

Poe would stay at Maria’s home off and on for 6 years. The house was often packed, containing not only Maria, Edgar, and Virginia but also Maria’s son Henry, an intermittent drinker, Poe’s paralytic grandmother who had been bedridden for two years and Edgar’s older brother William Henry Leonard Poe, now an alcoholic suffering from advanced Tuberculosis. Sounds like a really fun place to live. Again, no wonder he wrote dark, gloomy poems and stories. And damn, man - consumption is getting fucking everyone in this story!

Poe’s second book of poems was published in 1829, “Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems” by publishers Hatch and Dunning. From everything I was able to find, it doesn’t appear that he made any money from this second book. But it did receive a highly favorable notice from the novelist and critic John Neal which at least affirmed Poe’s belief that he did have a talent for writing. And, it was the first book Poe didn’t have to self-publish.

However, he still couldn’t make any money at it, and since his dad wasn’t going to just pay his way through life, he needed a job.

N. 1830: Poe traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1, 1830. Taking another crack at the military to make some steady money. Initially it is noted that Poe enjoyed West Point and did well at the academy. In one biography, Poe’s time at West Point has him described as the class ‘satirist’. During his time here he conspired with classmate Thomas W. Gibson to play a prank on fellow cadets. They tricked them into thinking that Gibson, wielding a bloody knife, had just murdered someone. Gotta say - that’s a solid prank! The old “stumble upon a group of friends with another, panicked friend holding a bloody knife and tell them all you’ve just come from a murder” prank. Classic!

After his first term at West Point, Poe allegedly decided he wanted to leave the academy, but he was not allowed to leave without John Allan’s consent. God - parents had way too much power back then, didn’t they? Poe is twenty-one, why does he needs his dad’s permission for anything? I remember when the Dean of Students at Gonzaga University threatened to call my parents when I got busted for having a party without a permit on school grounds when I was a senior and I just laughed. I was 21 and paying for school myself. What the fuck were my parents gonna do? Call ‘em up! They’ll get a good kick out of this story. I was gonna tell ‘em myself in a few weeks, but, why don’t you go ahead. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other mayhem stories to share with them soon enough.

Things aren’t going well with dad number two at this time. John goes from being perpetually annoyed with Edgar to abandoning him.

In October of 1830, John Allan married his second wife Louisa Patterson, and she didn’t care for Edgar and he didn’t care for her. He felt like she pushed her way into John’s life to get at his money and it sounds like she basically pushed Edgar out of John’s will if he wasn’t out already.

Damn it! He was counting on that will money to pay for his ability to live as a writer!

That must be such an odd feeling to be a struggling artist type and have rich parents or a rich parent who isn’t supporting you in life, but may support you in death. It would be so tempting in that situation to kind of root for your parents’ death, which can’t be psychologically healthy.

But it would be hard not to root for that on some level. The motive is obvious. What a conflicted mental state that would put you in. You don’t want to be a monster and root for the death of your own parent BUT… if your parent is not helping you achieve your artistic dream even though they have the means and it would possibly benefit you greatly if they died it would be SO HARD not to kind of want them to die. BUT, you still probably love them because they are your parents. What a tricky mental place to dwell in!

Luckily, I don’t have to worry about that. My parents are poor. I hope my dad lives a long time because I don’t want his many many creditors coming after me anytime soon, AND, I’d probably get stuck with the bill for his funeral. It would be a huge headache.

John and Edgar would never have a good relationship again after John’s marriage to Louisa.

His father refusing to help him get discharged from West Point to try his hand as a poet, Poe takes it upon himself to get kicked out. After less than a year of rule infractions Poe succeeded and was dismissed from West Point in February of 1831.

Some examples of his shenanigans: 1. Conduct roll call for July - December shows Poe had forty-four offenses and 106 demerits. While he was not at the very top of the list of “delinquents” this was still an impressive number. 2. Poe refused to go to classes or church - sixty-six offenses of missing class in the month of January alone 3. Reportedly once showed up to morning roll call in nothing but his boots. Haha! I love this one. That’s fantastic. That’s a blatant “c’mon, man. Just kick me the fuck out already. How many mornings do you want to have stare at my dick during roll call? Ten? A hundred? I’m not putting clothes on anymore, so, the ball’s in your court. Actually, BOTH of my balls are in your court. HEY-OO! You just got punned by a dude not wearing pants!”

O. 1831: Poe left for New York in February 1831 and released a third volume of poems, simply titled Poems. The book was financed with help from his fellow cadets at West Point, many of whom donated seventy-five cents to the cause, raising a total of $170. The book, while published, once again made Poe no money and he returned to Baltimore to live with his aunt, brother, and the rest. That has to sting to keep coming back to that collection of random relatives after each failed attempt at striking out on his own. Gotta say though, I admire his dedication to the craft! He clearly had true passion for literature. He had numerous chances to make a decent living and have a normal life and he burned those bridges for the chance to produce art. I love that.

More bad news for Poe in 1831. His brother would die of consumption, sped up by alcoholism, that August. He was only twenty-four. Damn it. His brother had also tried his hand as a writer, getting a few poems published in some Baltimore magazines before dying far too young.

P. 1831/1832: Poe also found love again in 1831 amidst his grief. Mary Devereaux was a neighbor of his aunt Maria Clemm, and Poe would send over his ten-year old cousin Virginia, ol’ sissie, to carry love notes to her. In 1889, forty years after Poe’s death, Mary would give an extensive interview confirming that, before she had ever even met Poe, ten-year-old Virginia appeared on Poe’s behalf and asked for a lock of hair. So weird. And she gave her that lock of hair. Even weirder. She stated that he was “passionate in his love” and that his ‘feelings were intense and he had but little control over them.” Hot and heavy! Hail Lucifina!

Mary stated that one night, Poe didn’t show up when he’d promised to but then showed up later smelling of liquor after having met up with some cadet buddies from West Point. She told him to leave but Poe refused and they started arguing and Mary left Poe in the street, and ran into her house. Poe followed, and tried to get upstairs to her bedroom, but her mother blocked the way and told him to leave. Poe insisted on talking to Mary, drunkenly shouting, “I have a right! She is my wife now in the sight of Heaven!” Yeah buddy. Carnal marriage! They’d done the deed! Of one flesh!

Mary was disgusted by Poe’s lustful behavior that night and broke off all contact. Sure she’d give a lock of her hair to a neighbor she’d never met but she was not about to put up with drunken sex talk!

Mary concluded that, “He didn’t value the laws of God or man. He was an atheist. He would just as well have lived with a woman without being married to her as not… I made a narrow escape in not marrying him.”

What a scoundrel young Poe was! Wanting that sweet lady hole love but not wanting to lock it up with a ring. For shame!

Q. 1833: By 1833, after his early attempts at poetry, Poe turned his attention to prose. He placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began work on his only drama ad attempt at a play, Politian. A few installments were released and then after poor reviews, Poe never finished it. However, the Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded Poe a prize in October 1833 for his short story "MS. Found in a Bottle" and the story won him a $50 prize, the most money he’d made as a writer by far, and it brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, a Baltimorean of considerable means who introduced Poe to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe became assistant editor of the periodical in August 1835. This was usually how authors made money, by working for magazines or papers as editors, critics, or regular contributors. Even then, there wasn’t much of a living to be made. Edgar lost his assistant editor job after just a few weeks for getting caught being drunk by his boss.

So, having just gotten fired, Edgar returned to Baltimore to do what a lot of 25 year old men do when they lost their job and don’t know what to do with the rest of their life - he courted his twelve-year old cousin.

R. 1834: In 1834, two big things happen in Edgar’s young life. His adoptive father John Allan dies and Poe learns that he has definitely, for sure been left out of his will, and - twenty-five year-old Poe expresses love for his twelve-year-old first-cousin Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe. The girl he called “sissie”. The girl he’s lived with on and off since she was seven. The girl he had pass love notes on his behalf to the last woman he dated.

What the fuck!?! Even for the mid-18th century… this was weird. Eliza would be listed on the marriage document as being 21 to avoid scandal. Guessing he left out the part about being first cousins as well. Poe went full Einstein! Remember how he was also a cousin-fucker! Poe took it further - he was a cousin molester! And he also went full Woody Allen! He married someone he’d known as a family member as a child. Actually, he took it much further than Woody did. Eliza was related by blood. And only twelve. Fuck that’s weird. That’s my son’s age. The girls in his class are so clearly children. And Poe was a grown man when he met his cousin who was seven. And then five years later, he proposes to her. Did his proposal involve a trail of candy leading to his pedophile bedroom? What… the… fuck?

Now - in Poe’s historical, contextual defense… the age of consent varied in the US at this time from state to state, between 10 and 12 years of age. And yes, I did Google “what was the age of consent in America in the 19th century.” And yes, when I did, I immediately worried that I was put on a watch list for potential pedophiles. And, I kind of hope I was because that means that actual pedophiles are being put on lists for the creepy shit they search on-line.

Legal or not, what Poe did was also unusual for it’s time, and, the added dimension of them being first cousins made it creepier.

Complicating things morally, Poe did seem to really love her and they remained together until her death. Does that make it better or worse? I don’t know.

I think of Mary Kay Letourneau. Remember her? When she was thirty-four in 1996, the then sixth-grade school teacher slept with one her 12 year old students. A student 22 years younger than she was. A child. A child my son’s age. And she got pregnant. That is so, so, SO fucked up to me.

She was arrested and pleaded guilty to child rape.

Then, in 1998, two weeks after spending six months in jail, she got caught sleeping with the same kid, who now fourteen. And she got pregnant. Again. She was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison this time. Gave birth in jail to their second daughter. Then, in 2005, after getting out of prison, Mary and the now twenty-one-year-old year old father of her two kids got married. And they’ve now been married for over twelve years. Their oldest daughter is now twenty-one. And her dad is only thirty- three. Fucking… crazy. It wouldn’t be that weird for her to date her dad’s friends and for him to date her friends, age-wise. So strange.

So, is that more fucked up then Mary just sleeping with him once and then never seeing him again? Or less fucked up? Mary isn’t believed to have ever had sex with or molested any other kids. Poe isn’t believed to have ever slept with or molested any other minor. Just like Mary loved her student, he seemed to have really loved his young cousin. Are they true pedophiles? Or did they actually fall in love with one child? Does it matter? So much harder for me to condemn this when it’s not some stranger popping out from a van molesting kid after kid. So much more confusing when there’s an element of obvious love, as misguided as I believe that element is.

Well, however messed up it was, it’s what Poe did.

While Poe tried to obtain a teaching position at Richmond Academy to take care of his family, his second cousin Nielson Poe, who had married Virginia’s half sister, offered to take Virginia in, and care for her till she reached a suitable age for marriage. On August 29, 1835 Poe wrote his bride-to-be, “Virginia, my love, my own sweetest Sissy, my darling little wifey, think well before you break the heart of your cousin.”

Jesus. How do you reread that sentence and think, “Oh my God!?! What am I doing with my life!?! This is terrible. I’m a cousin fucker. I’m a young cousin fucker! I’m a young, cousin, “sissie” fucker! I don’t just write about monsters. I am a monster.”

S. May 16th, 1836: On May 16th 1836, the 13.5 year old Virginia marries the 27 year old Poe. Poe buys her lingerie for the honeymoon but she declines to wear it saying she’d feel more comfortable in some Winnie the Pooh footie pajamas. She also decline his offer of wine in favor of some tropical juice Capri Sun.

Sorry. I just clearly made up the lingerie part. And obviously Capri Sun’s weren’t around then. They may not be around now? It’s just so colossally messed up.

Poe did genuinely adore Virginia, stretching his income to help Virginia pursue lessons in voice and piano, and Poe himself tutored her in the classics, algebra, and other subjects. Poe didn’t get that teaching job, but he was reinstated by White at The Southern Literary Messenger as assistant editor after promising good behavior, and went back to Richmond with Virginia and her mother. He remained at the Messenger until January 1837. During this period, Poe claimed that its circulation increased from 700 to 3,500. He published several poems, book reviews, critiques, and stories in the paper.

Witness accounts from the time state that Poe did not sleep in the same room as Virginia the first two years, but that when she turned 16, they began a normal, sexual marriage.

Okay. So, still creepy, but… different era. Different time. I at least respect that they waited until at least 16, which, while you can argue is still too young, was very normal for that time, and is WAY different than 12 or 13. Still don’t condone it! Still creepy as shit. Still so fucked up.

T. 1839: In the summer of 1839, Poe became assistant editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. The magazine included poems, fiction, and essays, with an emphasis on sporting life. Articles featured sailing, cricket, hunting, and more. Poe published numerous articles, stories, and reviews, enhancing his reputation as a critic which he had established at the Southern Literary Messenger. Yeah, I keep forgetting to point out he also worked as a critic, reviewing his literary peers. And apparently he panned most of their shit - savagely. Really was not well-liked because of that by his contemporaries. How strange would that be? I would hate to review other comic’s albums. And then run into them at a club some place. “Good set, John.” “Was it a good set, Dan? Or was it ‘another wasted effort from yet another an over-hyped Hollywood “it kid”. One star!?! Fuck you, Cummins!’”

Also in 1839, Poe’s collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes, though he made little money from it and it received mixed reviews. Poe left Burton's after about a year and found a position as assistant at Graham's Magazine. Graham’s Magazine published short stories, critical reviews, and music as well as information on fashion, and paid the high for age price of $5 a page! Edgar would go on to make TENS OF DOLLARS writing for Graham’s! Ten’s! He also published his famous “The Fall of the House of Usher” in 1839.

U. 1841: In 1841, Graham’s would publish Poe’s short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, now recognized as the world’s first modern detective story, a story that would lead to the genre that a short time later would produce Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also influenced greatly by Poe. V. 1842: More tragedy starts in 1842. At the age of twenty, Poe’s young bride, Virginia, suffers her first hemorrhage from Tuberculosis. Poe immediately knew she had been given a death sentence and he started looking for his next love. His niece, Dorothy moved in with them. He knew, of course, he’d have to wait for Virginia to die and also for Dorothy to get older. She’d just turned ten recently. Ten months old. Poe knew FOR SURE, he’d have to wait until she was done breastfeeding.

Kidding! Edgar remained devoted to Virginia.

She began to lose considerable weight and became ill. On January 20th, 1842, while playing piano and singing, a blood vessel in her throat broke and blood began running out of her mouth. She would soon become an invalid and Poe would struggle to financially provide for her.

It was torture for them both.

Virginia would seem to get better, than suddenly get much worse. Another vessel broke at the end of 1842. And then another, and another, and another. The cycle of seeming to get better than once again, hemorrhaging and coughing up blood and bedridden continues over and over and over. What a fucking terrible way to slowly die.

Poe’s writing grows darker. His world is constant misery. His writing also gets better and better but financial compensation doesn’t come with it. He can barely feed and house his young, sick bride. He wears clothes that aren’t much better than rags. He can only afford one coat that he wears for several years. A coat that double’s as a blanket for Virginia on especially cold days.

He begins to drink more and more and more. He struggles with alcoholism like his older brother Henry and father before him. He also writes some of the best shit of his career.

He returns to New York in 1843 where he worked briefly at the Evening Mirror before becoming editor of the Broadway Journal and, later, sole owner. There he alienated himself from other writers by publicly accusing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism, though Longfellow never responded. On January 29, 1845, his poem "The Raven", a poem he wrote while his young wife died, appeared in the Evening Mirror and became a popular sensation. It made Poe a household name almost instantly, though he was paid only $9 for its publication.

Poe’s Broadway Journal fails in 1846. Poe moves into a small cottage in Fordham, New York, in what is now the Bronx. That home, since relocated to the southeast corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road, is now known as the Poe Cottage.

Virginia dies at this cottage on January 30, 1847. Poe is inconsolable. He travels to her grave often, at all hours of day and night, weeping and grieving whom he considered the love of his life for months. Biographers and critics often suggest that Poe's frequent theme of the "death of a beautiful woman" stems from the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his wife.

W. 1848: The next year, lonely, broke, and miserable, Poe makes several, desperate attempts at love, reaching out to Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, the old neighbor girl whose father tore up young Edgar’s letters. She was a widow now and her husband had left her a considerable amount of money. He asks her to marry him and she says yes but her children talk her into changing her mind because there was a clause in her deceased husband’s will that said if she remarried she would lose roughly $100,000. And they knew Poe would have to no way to take care of her - or them. We’re talking $100,000 in 1848 money. Almost three million in today’s dollars. Thwarted again by Sarah’s family roughly twenty years later! Damn it!

Poe also clumsily pursued a married woman named Nancy Locke Heywood Richmond and fellow poet Sarah Helen Whitman in 1848. He was basically asking anyone who he thought might marry him to marry him. The other Sarah also said yes and then also thought better of it. He hits up relatives asking if there are any young cousins he can groom, I mean, “babysit”. Sorry. It’s so hard not to keep making fun of him for his young cousin love.

X. 1849: And then, on October 3, 1849, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to Joseph W. Walker who found him. He was taken to the Washington Medical College where he died a few days later on Sunday, October 7, 1849 at 5:00 in the morning, at the age of 40.

Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. He is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Some sources say that Poe's final words were "Lord help my poor soul”. All medical records have been lost, including his death certificate. No autopsy was performed and he was quickly buried. What a strange death for a man who wrote a lot about strange deaths.

Y. What the Hell happened to him? So what the Hell happened to Poe?

1. Beaten: One theory is he was beaten to death. “At the instigation of a woman, ” Smith writes, “who considered herself injured by him, he was cruelly beaten, blow upon blow, by a ruffian who knew of no better mode of avenging supposed injuries. It is well known that a brain fever followed. . . .” Other accounts also mention “ruffians” who had beaten Poe senseless before his death. As Eugene Didier wrote in his 1872 article, “The Grave of Poe,” that while in Baltimore, Poe ran into some friends from West Point, who prevailed upon him to join them for drinks. Poe, unable to handle liquor, became madly drunk after a single glass of champagne, after which he left his friends to wander the streets. In his drunken state, he “was robbed and beaten by ruffians, and left insensible in the street all night.”

So many fucking ruffians in Baltimore! Apparently that town was rough long before The Wire. Nothing but fucking ruffians!

2. Cooping: An alternate beaten theory involves the practice of “cooping”. This shit is so interesting to me. So bizarre. And, it seems that most historians give the cause of death the best Vegas odds.

Cooping was a method of voter fraud practiced by gangs in the 19th century where an unsuspecting victim would be kidnapped, disguised and forced to vote for a specific candidate multiple times under multiple disguised identities. Voter fraud was extremely common in Baltimore around the mid 1800s, and the polling site where Walker found the disheveled Poe was a known place that coopers brought their victims. The fact that Poe was found delirious on election day, then, is no coincidence.AND - this explains, better than any other theory, why he was wearing someone else’s clothes at the time of his death.

Over the years, the cooping theory has come to be one of the more widely accepted explanations for Poe’s strange demeanor. Before Prohibition, voters were given alcohol after voting as a sort of reward; had Poe been forced to vote multiple times in a cooping scheme, that might explain his semi-conscious, ragged state.

And, it’s not like this theory can’t be combined with other theories. Maybe he did some cooping and then some ruffians roughed him up. Probably for hitting on their nine-year-old sister. Or maybe he pinched the bottom of their eleven-year-old niece.

3. Rabies: There’s also a chance he died of rabies because it was 1849, and people still died of rabies. Rabies would explain his erratic behavior at the time of his death. The master of horror - taken out by a mangy squirrel! Who knows. 4. Brain Tumor: One of the most recent theories about Poe’s death suggests that the author succumbed to a brain tumor, which influenced his behavior before his death. When Poe died, he was buried, rather unceremoniously, in an unmarked grave in a Baltimore graveyard. Twenty-six years later, a statue was erected, honoring Poe, near the graveyard’s entrance. Poe’s coffin was dug up, and his remains exhumed, in order to be moved to the new place of honor. But more than two decades of buried decay had not been kind to Poe’s coffin—or the corpse within it—and the apparatus fell apart as workers tried to move it from one part of the graveyard to another. Little remained of Poe’s body, but one worker did remark on a strange feature of Poe’s skull: a mass rolling around inside. Newspapers of the day claimed that the clump was Poe’s brain, shriveled yet intact after almost three decades in the ground.

We know, today, that the mass could not be Poe’s brain, which is one of the first parts of the body to rot after death. But Matthew Pearl, an American author who wrote a novel about Poe’s death, was nonetheless intrigued by this clump. He contacted a forensic pathologist, who told him that while the clump couldn’t be a brain, it could be a brain tumor, which can calcify after death into hard masses.

5. Murder: There’s also a theory that he was murdered. Some speculate he did talk that old neighbor girl from his youth, Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, into marrying him and was on his way to Virginia to wrap it up, and then her brothers killed Poe before he could ruin their sister’s life by costing her that $100 grand. Gotta say, if that was the case, I don’t totally blame them. He probably would’ve ruined their sister’s life.

But my money’s on the cooping and the ruffians!

And, how poetically perfect is it that the inventor of the modern detective story and the man heralded by Stephen King and many others as the master of suspense died a mysterious, unsolvable death?

With no DNA evidence available and all the suspects and eye witnesses long dead, we’ll probably never know how he died.

We do know that the man who, over 150 years after his death, shows up on pretty much every list of the most influential authors in American history did die, for the most part, alone and penniless. And that takes us out of this Timesuck Timeline.

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IV. Conclusions

A. Death haunted Poe. No wonder he wrote about so much of it. Before this Suck, all I really knew of him was that he wrote the raven and he had a spooky gothic look to him. Do you know The Raven? It has to be, arguably the most famous poem in American history. For sure top ten. I don’t know shit about poetry and I know that one. A horror poem. Such a cool poem, the NFL team the Baltimore Ravens are actually named after it. Not even kidding. Football team named after a poem. Initially they had three bird mascots, named “Edgar”, “Allan”, and “Poe”. After the 2008 season ended, Edgar and Allan were retired, leaving Poe as the sole mascot of the Baltimore Ravens. For the 2009 season, Poe was joined by two real live ravens, "Rise" and “Conquer".

Want to hear a little bit of the Raven? Sure you do. It’s a poem about a young man trying to forget the recent death of his beloved, written by a man living with his soon to be dead beloved. Some creepy talking raven shows up, and informs the young man he will not be reunited with his lover in heaven. The raven seems to possess of at least block the rising his soul. I think. It’s fucking poetry so it’s hard to say. Here goes my sample reading of the first chunk of the Raven:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door- Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore - Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door— Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;— This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, “Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!” - Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; - ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door— Perched, and sat, and nothing more

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, “Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

It’s just spooky, right? The rhythm of the words, the word choices obviously. Such a tone of dread and dreariness. This poem made Poe a celebrity of sorts. Kids would follow him in the street, shouting “the raven” and “nevermore!”

Recently, another Poe poem was found, previously unpublished, that I think would’ve made Poe an even bigger literary star in his day. It was called “The Butcher”

B. Read a bit of “The Butcher”:

Wet sheets and a broth of beets, the Butcher dreams of forbidden meats; softly. Softly.

Cold village nights bring dark delights as the Butcher looks for the young to fight; softly. Softly.

A few cuts and the bone turns firm, it’s the Butcher’s turn to make you squirm; softly. Softly.

The stab of the knife is the last thing you feel, the last thing you hear is “What is big deal?”; softly. softly.

This monster lives not in some cold, stone castle, he works at your school, and it’s time to wrassle; Softly. Softly.

Will you tease him now? Dare you mock? The butcher with his evil grin and his soft, shame cock?; Softly, Softly.

The butcher’s rock hard now, which means you’re gone. What is big deal, he asks your corpse, Do you like my poem? Softly. Softly.

So. There you go! A little Chikatilo Poe poem! Who’s Chikatilo you ask, new listener? A piece of shit Ukrainian serial killer who has become a recurring character on the show because we Timesuckers have a super fucked up sense of humor. I love it.

No idiots today. Instead, I took the time I would devote to that to write out a little Timesucker refresher I’m putting at the end of the episode.

So, Poe. What an interesting life. How tragic in so many ways. What dedication to literature he had. He suffered so much for his craft. I admire that about him for sure. I love comedy, but, if year after year, it left me flat broke, I wonder how long I could stick with it? I’d love to say I have his artistic dedication but I’m not sure I do. I admire how he stuck to his guns. He critiqued his contemporaries harshly when he thought their stuff wasn’t up to snuff. Not many are willing to do that. Lot more ass kissers than ass kickers out in the world. the young cousin marriage is hard to reconcile. That’s, um, uncomfortable. Artistically though - what a giant. What a pioneer. I mean, he shaped so much of modern American literary culture which in turn shaped so much of our film culture which in so many ways shapes our culture. Would there be goth kids without Poe? Would there have been Hitchcock? Would there be all of the police procedurals - the whole Law and Order and CSI franchises? Who knows. Maybe someone else would’ve just taken his place. Or maybe not, maybe one person can make that much of a difference. And make it long after they’ve died.

Makes me think about my own, very small, artistic legacy. Gotta take it seriously. Who knows what my silly little jokes might influence. Who knows how this podcast might change someone’s life, and then there life could change someone else’s. Think about that with your life. How might you change the future? Will it be through deeds? Or maybe influence? Maybe your child your niece or nephew will go on to do something magnificent and game changing, something they wouldn’t of done had they not encountered you. Maybe you’ll invent something that will change the course of human history. Or maybe your invention will lead to another invention that does.

Get out there and kick some ass Timesucker. Shape the future. Shape it in a good way. And try to do it with as little cousin-fucking as possible.

Time now, for Top Five Takeaways!

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V. Top Five Takeaways 1. Number one! Edgar Allan Poe changed the writing and publishing world. Before Poe, not many were able to make a living off of solely writing and no American, not at least one of any note, had been able to pull it off. Edgar insisted that writing would be his career, and he made major strides to find an audience for his entertaining articles, which would become the initial spark of the magazine industry. In many ways, he paved the way for writers to be compensated enough to have a career.

2. Number two! Poe introduced the first recorded literary detective in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The detective character would lead to become the prototypical detective we know today. On a side note, a lot of people cite the word detective wasn’t in existence in 1841 for Poe to use in describing his lead character, but it’s been proven to have been printed in 1840, a year before Poe’s novel. It’s very well possible that the word was used commonly in speech at the time.

3. Number three! Poe is considered by many to be the first master of the literary suspense and mystery, and his unusual death is a mystery to us still.

4. Number four! Poe married his first cousin when she was 13 and he was 26, so, you know, fucking gross. In addition to a literary genius he was also an incestuous creep.

5. Number Five! New info! You can find numerous celebrities, such as James Earl Jones - Darth Vader, and prolific horror actor Vincent Price doing their reading of The Raven on Youtube. But my favorite is Christopther Walken. Do yourself a favor and listen to at least some of the roughly nine minute reading. It’s, as you would expect, unusual. When I listen to it, for added comedic effect, I like to imagine Christopher Walken playing the totally unnecessary electric guitar riffs you hear randomly throughout the reading.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS

VI. Final Announcements

A. Edgar Allan Poe has been sucked. I sucked him as if I was a teenage cousin. God. I had fun on that one. Not that I don’t on others. But, really had fun on that one. Hope you did too! 1. Big thanks to the Timesuck Team! Harmony Vellekamp, Jesse Dobner, Reverend Doctor Josh Krell, Alex Dugan, the Bit Elixir Team, Danger Brain, Merch Maestro Erik Radaker, Lynze Cummins, and Josh Krell.

Huge thanks to two new members of the Bojangles Research Department - good boy, Bojangles! Good boy! Those two new members are Kai Beamer, the humble Space Hemptress and Nick Wentzel, her Lizard ‘High’ Priest. You two killed it. Thank you. r Coming up quick on Monday, another Space Lizard ordained topic. Those lizards voted in the Golden state Killer! And it looks like Tesla may not be far behind. Tesla in a heated vote battle with the Knights Templar on the Space Lizard voting section of the app and website. How do you vote? You become a $5 a month Patreon supporter of the show and kick ass Space Lizard.

So, the Golden State Killer - we don’t usually Suck on a still unraveling case, so this Suck will be ripe for kick ass updates. This piece of shit allegedly committed at least 12 murders, over 50 rapes, and more than 100 burglaries between 1974 and 1986. He was also known as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker. He, or someone claiming to be the Golden State Killer taunted the police and the press with his crimes. And then the crimes stopped and the case went cold for decades. But investigators and investigative journalists never gave up, and on April 24th, 2018, just over a month ago, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department arrested 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo and charged him with eight counts of first-degree murder. And then on May 10th, he was charged with four more murders. All based on DNA evidence. How did they finally figure out it was Joseph? Why did it take so long to solve this crime? How many more crimes will he be charged with? We’re dig into the life and crimes of American’s current criminal obsession in just three days time.

And now, let’s find out what you Suckers have been drawn to this past week, with some Timesucker Updates!

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VII. Timesucker Updates A. Virtue Signaling: Update on an update! Let’s continue to discuss what it means to virtue signal! Big term in 2018. Am I virtue signaler? Not necessarily says Timesucker David Ranly:

“I’m sure someone else has already said this but just in case. This is regarding that guy calling you out on virtue signaling. One of the main problems with virtue signaling is someone without being prompted saying something that makes them feel like a good person or whatever. But for you we all tune into your podcast to listen to what you have to say and feel about whatever the topic is so you’re not virtue signaling (in my opinion) because that is what we all signed up for is your take on the topic. Like if you took a hard left turn from Joan of Arc and said “the holocaust was really bad you guys” the. When back to Joan of Arc that would be virtue signaling. Either way love the show and I saw you in San Antonio and it was the funniest stand up I’ve been to and all hail lucifina.

Well thank you San Antonio sucker! I like the distinction you made - people saying something “without being prompted.” And, great example! That would be a little ridiculous if during say, today’s episode on Edgar Allan Poe, I just suddenly stopped to say, “Hey guys, I was just told that rogue warlords are still killing kids in Africa, and I just want you to know, that’s not cool. You shouldn’t kill kids and make them fight in wars. It’s wrong. Seriously, you guys. Super wrong. Anyways, what Poe did as far as increasing a character’s psychological presence to the reader was truly amazing…”

B. French pronunciation update: A lot of warranted French pronunciation updates have been rolling in. This first one from Timesucker Jonh Harvey:

Lord Suckitude, In my moderately distant past, I managed to accumulate a number of Music degrees, so I can actually help you out on the composer's name in the Joan of Arc suck. The pronunciation of Guillaume de Machaut is GEE-yome deh Mah- SHOW with a hard "G" as in ghost or gas. (Guillaume is French for William.) His music is actually really , really trippy. He is famous because he was one of the first people in Europe to write anything that sounded like that. Give it a listen. Keep Suckin'! John

Thank you, John! I did listen and it is pretty trippy. I could only take a few minutes here in the Suck Dungeon. I felt like I should either listen to it in a giant cathedral, or on a medieval battlefield, or while making love to a maiden inside a castle in the 14th century.

Timesucker Jake Barrett also pointed out that Guillaume (GEE- yome)is the French equivalent of William.

C. English Pronunciation Update: Had an English pronunciation update come in as well from Super Sucker Geoffrey (Jeff-ree)

Greetings suck master.

just listening to the Joan of arc episode and wanted to shoot you a message and clarify the pronunciation of one name. You mentioned Geoffrey (Jeff-ree) of Monmouths history of King Arthur and Merlin. The name is pronounced Geoffrey (Jeff-ree) not (Joff-ree). It's a weird one I know. I can't tell you how many times people have used (Joff-ree) and asked me "oh like the guy from game of thrones?". Much like my last name, I'm cursed. Hope this helped. hail Nimrod!

Hail Nimrod (Jeff-ree)! Man, getting your first name and last name butchered. Or, more likely, your first name butchered and you last name of Asser mocked. You can never start a law firm with two other lawyers with last names of Licker and Hole. “Hello, I’m (Jeff-ree), and I’m here on behalf of Licker, Asser, and Hole.” D. Two fingered salute: One more cool medieval update from Andrew Bailey. Andrew says: You mention the British longbow men in the Joan of Arc suck. Did you know that they are directly responsible for the two fingered salute. This was their way of showing the French that they had the necessary digits to draw back a long bow, and inflict maximum pain on our Gallic neighbors. Hail Nimrod.

I’d forgot about that Andrew! I was told that many years ago and then blanked. Thanks for refreshing my memory. Yes, historians disagree on whether or not this actually happened, but, in Britain and some other common wealth nations, The act of using only the middle and index fingers, while bending the other fingers at the second knuckle, and with the palm facing the signer - basically a backwards peace sign - means "fuck you" in the United Kingdom. And legend holds it came from the Hundred Years War battles when English long bow archers would show those two fingers to remind the French they had more arrows coming for their asses. Pretty bad ass taunt if it’s true.

And that is all for this week’s Timesucker’s Updates. Stay tuned for those character summaries.

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VIII.Character descriptions/goodbye A. Characters: Alright Timesucker! Maybe you’re new to the game. Maybe it’s just been awhile since you thought about our cast of strange characters. Who the fuck is Nimrod? What’s up with that Chikatilo reference? Well, I’m here to help!

1. Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald: Let’s start with the oldest gag and character in the Timesuck Cannon. Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald. This joke goes all the way back to Timesuck 22, Al Capone’s Valentine Day massacre. The initial seeds for organized crime in Chicago were sown in the late 19th century by a gangster named Michael Cassius McDonald. At the time I was working on that episode, I was listening to lot of yacht rock on Pandora, and the name made me think of the musician Michael McDonald, and then I randomly snuck in me singing one of his songs. And some people thought that was funny, some others hated it, and I felt like doing it again and again and again. Timesuckers would complain that they got McDonald’d - his songs stuck in their heads for days when I sang a bit, and it became a gag. And then, later, he became Michacel Motherfuckin’ McDonald when he showed up as a cameo in some episodes fighting communism. And then he morphed into this government agent, secret assassin, time-traveling ass-kicker who just happens to have the voice of a Yacht Rock Angel. Basically, the joke with Triple M as he’s come to be known, is that he can do no wrong. He’s like the Dos Equis most interesting man in the world combined with those old Chuck Norris jokes combined with, well, Michael McDonald.

2. Nimrod: Nimrod is the second oldest joke in Timesuck mythology and also the oldest non-joke ever, for he is an immortal God. He’s the God of Timesuck. He originated in the Scientology Suck, where I talked about how you just can’t make up a new God and demand that everyone respect your fight to worship it. And then I spoke of Nimrod, a giant Space Sasquatch the size of a galaxy with the head of a Chupacabra who rides a black unicorn with flaming suns for eyes and he demands that I stomp in the skull of a cocker spaniel once a month to prove my obedience to him so that I’m worthy of living forever in his heavenly ballsack, one of his balls being the Alpha, the other being the Omega. In a much later episode, the Kurt Cobain Suck, I introduced Hell as being located in Nimrod’s butthole. And, ironically, me making fun of one God by introducing another seemingly more ridiculous God brought that second God into existence and now he’s hear to stay. Hail Nimrod!

3. Lucifina: After a while it didn’t seem right to have a God but not a Devilish companion. And so Lucifina came to be. Lucifina first appeared in bonus episode nine, the Salem Witch Trials Timesuck, still one of my very favorites, when she was introduced as an explanation of why I mess things up from time to time. It’s not my fault - it’s Lucifina’s fault! Begone Lucifina! It was later revealed that Lucifina is Satan’s sister and the only entity the Devil is afraid of. However, she doesn’t seem as much evil as she does mischievous. She’s also become the Suck’s symbol of sexuality. No one is sexier than Lucifina with her pinup curves and sultry style of dressing up in fishnet stockings and heels. Why does she dress so seductively? So she can distract me away from focusing on the Suck! Again, no mistakes are my fault. It’s all Lucifina’s doing.

4. Bojangles: Bojangles. Sweet Bojangles. The first star of the Suck. What a good boy and complicated character. Bojangles is the third oldest character and has become the show’s mascot. He showed up for the first time in the Marilyn Monroe Suck, over a year ago. He first appeared as the one-eyed, three-legged canine leader of a pack of feral pit bulls. Later, it became known that he’s an immortal God of sorts, once fighting Zeus tens of thousands of years ago in the battle that caused the city of Atlantis to fall into the sea. It was during this fight that he lost his eye and leg.

He also works with Triple M from time to time on covert government missions. There’s nothing he can’t do. He’s arguably the toughest of the characters, the most tenacious. I doubt even Lucifina could really fuck with him. She may have actually fucked him though. He’s a hit with ladies of all species. He’s also somehow the head of research. He also beats me up from time. He also doesn’t work every week. He basically does whatever he wants. Probably the coolest of all the characters. He’s like a bad ass Tom Hardy character in three legged, one-eyed form. And he can do more minus a leg and an eye than anyone with all their limbs and both their eyes. He’s a symbol of hope, really. Don’t complain about your disadvantages. Go out there and kick some ass in spite of them. Kick even more ass than you ever would otherwise. That’s what Bojangles does. He’s inspirational.

5. Pootie and Juju: Pootie and Juju! Who are these knuckle heads? Well, they showed up in the Stalin Suck where it was revealed that Lenin was a fan of these early 20th century American comic book characters. And ever since, they pop up from time to time as new episodes are revealed. Basically, Pootie and Juju are roommates who argue a lot and have had many an adventures. They’re known mainly for catchphrases, such as “Put it your lunchbox, Shirley!” And “Too little, too diddle, Pootie!” And, no matter how hard they fight, they always work things out in the end, just like we do here on Timesuck. They disagree, they argue, and they work shit out. They are Timesuck’s show within a show.

6. Chikatilo: So, Chikatilo. Oh Chikatilo. Arguably the most popular Timesuck character and also it’s worst. Chikatilo originated, of course, in the Andrei Chikatilo, butcher of Rostov episode. His biopic. The real Chikatilo is a Ukrainian serial killer who was put to death in the 90s after killing over 50 Russian citizens over many years, mostly women and children. And somehow we softened this monster and turned him into a lovable, yet still murderous character. The real Chikatilo suffered from impotence but also loved to masturbate. He was caught masturbating by coworker, students, and probably members of his family. But he couldn’t get hard unless he was attacking someone. So, usually he masturbated a semi-limp penis. A “shame cock” if you will. And so, he turned into this character who doesn’t understand why people get upset about him jerking off his limp dick in public. “What is big deal? I jerk soft, shame cock in corner. No one notice. Eat. Eat! Go about your meal.” As time as gone on, Chikatilo has just gotten weirder. He’s a good example of, “You can cry about terrible things or laugh at them.” Chikatilo is a terrible thing. And we laugh about him. A lot.

7. Pineys: What’s up with Pineys and that terrible puke song? Well, I learned about the real “piney’s” in the Jersey Devil episode. It’s a term, akin to “hillbilly”, that was historically assigned to the rural and generally uneducated residents of certain parts of Jersey’s Pine Barrens - a large chunk of thick forest in central New Jersey. For a time, inbreeding was rampant among this population and hygiene and proper nutrition was low. And I wrote a little ditty about a New Jersey governor being so disgusted by the sight of one Piney that he threw up on her face. I said: “And they were so unfortunate looking he vomited all over their dirty Piney faces! And these two degenerates, far from being offended, were happy to have a free meal. They licked most of his puke off of each other’s faces and out of each other’s beards and then fucked right in front of him, both making steady eye contact with the politician. The moment they were done a new-born gremlin popped out of the woman’s butt, snatched the startled governor’s wallet and ran up a tree with it while the gremlin’s parents broke into a banjo duet. (redneck jamboree song) “Well, look-ee here now I got some puke, tastiest puke I ever did lick, out of my woman’s beard. Well look-ee here now, with the full belly, I made a butt-baby with that woman o’mine, and the governor’s wallet we got! Whoo! Yi- haw!!!”

And now either a piney or some version of that song, or both, show up from time to time on the suck.

And, there’s countless other little jokes here and there that I feel like bringing back from time to time. But so far, these are the main ones. I hope this helped bring you up to speed!

B. Goodbye! So that’s all for today. Have a a great weekend, don’t set your romantic hopes on anyone still in grade school or younger unless you yourself are in grade school or younger, and Keep on Suckin’!

SOURCES: (sorry there are a ton and nothing is very specific - much of his life is speculation where numerous resources were compared and the most common response included in the above notes – there are definitely sources missing and I apologize!!!) * (Bramsback, Birgit. "The Final Illness and Death of Edgar Allan Poe: An Attempt at Reassessment", Studia Neophilologica. University of Uppsala, XLII, 1970: 40)

Books:

• Edgar Allen Poe A to Z by Dawn B. Sova

• A Historical Guide to Edgar Allen Poe by J. Gerald Kennedy

Websites: https://archive.org/stream/poemsfrominnerl00dotegoog#page/n24/mode/ 2up/search/poe https://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poechron.htm https://archive.org/stream/poemsfrominnerl00dotegoog#page/n26/mode/ 2up/search/poe https://books.google.com/books? hl=en&lr=&id=0ajYl9fPDfMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=edgar+allan+poe+adopt ive+parents&ots=HkpIrp1SWs&sig=SEvSlNHa3eNoO4Fe_Af68spgO6c#v= onepage&q&f=false https://www.geni.com/people/Edgar-Poe/6000000001142451203 http://poecalendar.blogspot.com/2009/03/poe-misses-his-foster-mothers- funeral.html https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/10/07/obituary-of-edgar-allan- poe/ https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1827/nyt49100.htm https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Poe-Obituary-by-Rufus- Griswold https://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poegrisw.htm https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815013816 https://earlyamericanwomenpoets.wikischolars.columbia.edu/Lizzie+Doten http://poecalendar.blogspot.com/2009/10/death-of-poe-funeral.html http://poecalendar.blogspot.com/2009/12/mystery-of-rosalie-poe.html http://labyrinth13.com/eBook-Labyrinth13.pdf https://www.eapoe.org/papers/misc1851/18830627.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe_in_television_and_film http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/the-10-best-horror-movies-based-on- the-works-of-edgar-allan-poe/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls004928704/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Category:Films_based_on_works_by_Edgar_Allan_Poe https://sites.google.com/a/scasd.org/zoesmall/poe-essay https://mysteryscenemag.com/index.php? option=com_content&view=article&id=38:evermore-the-enduring-influence- of-edgar-allan-poe&catid=46:feature&Itemid=19 http://flavorwire.com/542150/the-horror-genre-is-older-than-you-think-a- new-history-from-homer-to-lovecraft http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30313775 https://www.nps.gov/articles/poe-horror.htm https://smartblogger.com/stephen-king/ http://www.writing-world.com/rights/lynch.shtml https://themillions.com/2017/09/edgar-allan-poe-broke-ass-freelancer.html https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/adam_sandler/ https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/forbes-highest-paid-actors-of-2017/6/ https://www.forbes.com/pictures/emjl45efgei/1-james-patterson/ #3f4cb7937d57 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Poe https://www.nps.gov/people/poe-johnallan.htm

Read more: http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pe-Pu/Poe-Edgar- Allan.html#ixzz5GrM5ow1A https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/still-mysterious-death-edgar- allan-poe-180952936/