Getting Recent Readers Caught Up on the State of Affairs

(Remember how, in the days of standard episodic television before streaming and binging, many dramas and some comedies would give a thumbnail update starting with “Previously on…”, flashing scenes so fast that people starting midway through a season or story were more confused than before? Well, that’s what this newsletter is like. Look at these as regular updates, probably quarterly, of how the sausage is made, with what, and whether or not the staff washed their hands after they used the toilet. Or, worse, if they washed their hands before using the toilet.)

The St. Remedius Experience

Okay, so the main reason you’re here is for the Annals of St. Remedius Medical College stories. What everyone knows so far is that St. Remedius used to be a prominent educational institution located in Dallas, Texas, before its complete and inexplicable disappearance. St. Remedius acted both as an archive and clearinghouse for exonormal phenomena of all sorts and as an educational institution training the next several generations of investigators, in particular giving them the skills to separate legitimate phenomena from hoaxes, scams, and delusions. As of this writing, the background on what St. Remedius did and didn’t do, the individuals either working for, studying at, or interacting with the college, and surrounding people and places affected by the school, are just starting up. Expect a lot over the next quarter, including more on the Quantum War, individual stories involving the St. Remedius Bromley Contingent, and the sanity-shredding horror that is Some Guy. To quote one of the great philosophers of the Twentieth Century, you’ll boogie ‘til you puke.

Backstories

For other hints as to where things are going, feel free to visit the currently bereft country that is the Backstories and Fragments section, full of stories that were originally attached to various carnivorous plant enclosures. Some of these have connections to St. Remedius, but others are just strangeness in print. Either way, if you’re looking to kill a few hours at work, feel free to root around: I was making a lot of carnivorous plant enclosures between 2016 and 2023, so there’s plenty of backstory.

The Author

Hello. I’m Paul, and you may know me from a wide range of odd situations. Between March 1989 and May 2002, I was a pro writer taking advantage of the Golden Age of Magazine Publication through the 1990s, the zine revolution of same, and the explosion of weekly newspapers through, you guessed it, the same time period. Between waiting months and years for commissioned articles and essays to see print and waiting just as long for payment, I gave up on professional publication in 2002 (almost all of that output is currently in the collections Greasing the Pan: The “Best” of Paul T. Riddell and The Savage Pen of Onan: The “Best” of the Hell’s Half-Acre Herald, both published in 2009 by Fantastic Books), moved to Tallahassee, Florida, and promptly found myself with a mild obsession with carnivorous plants. That led to showing carnivorous plants at science fiction conventions and garden shows, which itself led to starting the Texas Triffid Ranch, best described as “Dallas’s Pretty Much Only Carnivorous Plant Gallery.” That ran between 2015 and 2023, and after a lengthy recuperation, the current project started in May 2024. As to where it’s going, well, you can either keep up with installments or subscribe.

As to what I do when I’m not writing strange little tributes to a long-gone educational institution, that depends upon the day. I’m currently working toward a Masters degree in Museum Studies thanks to previous work with the Triffid Ranch, and one of the side-projects involves a series of art installations that I hope to debut in early 2025. In between, the research for each St. Remedius installment means that most free time goes into either reading or cooking, usually while letting Parker below let off steam by lounging in the back yard and staring down squirrels and the occasional opossum or armadillo. (The plan is to have several St. Remedius events through 2025, preferably while serving handmade ice creams and sorbets. Considering the size of the mailing list, I may have to get really good with liquid nitrogen.)

Parker

Say hello to Parker. Parker is a lynx-point Siamese cat that literally showed up at my old gallery at the end of October 2022, saw the “Sucker” sign on my forehead, and decided to move in. Parker has his own newsletter category, partly because friends and cohorts like him much more than they like me (and I can’t blame them in the slightest) and partly because I’m trying to convince him not to start his own OnlyFans. At nearly 10 kilos (22 pounds), Parker doesn’t have too many other employment options, as the obvious ones (body pillow, draft excluder, rifle range berm, glacier moraine) have been outsourced to death. Contrary to popular perception, his nickname “the Lint-Covered Breast Implant” is just that. His hobbies include attempted escape out the front door (to the point where he was almost named “Number Six”), yelling at passing cats and rabbits, drinking from the bathroom sink faucet, and convincing visitors that he’s a good kitty and all of my anecdotes about his beastly behavior are blatant lies.

Related News

More than a few regular readers are here thanks to the Dallas Observer, not because of the plethora of articles about the old gallery (including the Best of Dallas award in 2017), but because you came across Jef Rouner’s story of my getting an FBI record for allegedly selling government secrets to the Daleks. This apparently thrilled David Langford of Ansible, who included it in his October newsletter, thereby bringing out a load of British fans of my previous writing. The real thrill about the article, though, was being described as “one of Dallas’s best eccentrics”: I’ve spent my life gunning for “one of Dallas’s most insufferable assholes not currently at D magazine,” but I’ll take what I can get.

Cooking References

Now that October is over, we finally have a bit of rain, and we’re not facing outdoor temperatures more suited for the Fourth of July than Halloween, it’s time to get back to cooking. This includes ransacking Michael Hultquist’s archives over at Chili Pepper Madness, dropping a nice load of pecan wood left over from last May’s tornado into the grill, and making jalapeno poppers, among many other things intended to fend off the chill of impending winter. (For those who want to research things further, I recommend the Spicy Food Lovers’ Cookbook, because my copy of his poppers recipe book is not leaving my house until my estate sale.)

Other Reading

Entertainment should never be so obtuse that it requires homework, much less subtitles, but for those seeking additional clarification as to from where much of the St. Remedius weirdness comes, these personal interludes include reading references from here on in. (I used to include them with individual installments, but far too many readers didn’t go that far.) With that in mind, let’s look at essential reading, and expect much larger lists in the future.

(Be warned in advance: a listing does not always include endorsement. Some listings will be for books so ridiculous that they should be in the “Humor” section, if only because only the main locale for Mendellosian Books in San Antonio has a section for “Complete and Utter Bullshit.”)

• Junk DNA: A Journey Through the Dark Matter of the Genome by Nessa Carey (Icon Books, 2015)

• Beasts Before Us: The Untold Story of Mammal Origins and Evolution by Elsa Panciroli (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2021)

• Time Song: Journeys In Search of a Submerged Land by Julia Blackburn (Pantheon Books, 2019)

And if you’re looking for something different but not sure where to start, go dig around the archives of Asher Elbein for a while. I say with considerable authority that Asher is one of the best science writers alive today, certainly one of the best in Texas, and should the St. Remedius stories get any kind of fame, my dream would be to have him conduct the first interview. Hence, I really have to get my writing skill and quality up there, because he left me in the dust years ago.

Events

Many thanks to everyone who reached out this last summer upon hearing the news about the death of my best friend Paul Mears, and I’m still processing the loss of someone who was an integral part of my life since I first moved to the Dallas area. The 45th anniversary of our first meeting is this upcoming December 7, and since Pearl Harbor Day falls on a Friday, there’s an opportunity to fulfill one last thing for him. Back the second time I moved back to the Dallas area at the end of 1997, Paul and I had a friendly wager involving developments in the literary science fiction community: whether we would see the release of the Harlan Ellison-edited anthology The Last Dangerous Visions before the next issue of the magazine Science Fiction Eye. The last time we talked before he died, Paul and I were discussing the release of the former, and which local restaurant offered the tastiest and tenderest crow for a celebratory dinner. (In my case, I’m no longer referring to Science Fiction Eye as “The Last Dangerous Magazine,” mostly because a quarter-century after the very quiet announcement that it was shutting down so the editor didn’t have to refund subscriptions, it’s best to let it die in obscurity. That said, considering the years between issues in the 1990s, the ultimate irony would be to see a new issue in my mailbox next week.) Well, the copy of The Last Dangerous Visions ordered at the beginning of spring is finally coming in, so it will sit at the head of the table in his stead for a dinner and memorial on December 7. Details on the location and specifics will be included in an upcoming newsletter, probably at a personal favorite venue of his, but expect further news by the end of November.

Final Words

As always, passing on word about this silly little newsletter is greatly appreciated, and the plan is to augment the experience in the near future. Jason Stanford at The Experiment notes, with surprise and delight, the number of online publications now offering a print edition as a premium for paid subscribers, and the Annals of St. Remedius will join this august gathering as soon as it can be afforded. Among other things, watching the zine movement start back up again for the first time in 20 years makes this old man really happy, and it may be time to play around with a quarterly or annual zine with specialty stories and bios only available in a print edition. As with everything else, keep an eye out.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

Personal interlude The Story So Far