Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Bonus 22 - Edgar Allan Poe

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

Edgar Allan Poe did more than write The Raven and look creepy. He also basically invented the modern detective story. He was America's first "master of suspense" according to Stephen King and many other modern authors. He changed the way American authors wrote scary stories. He changed the way authors in general approached their craft, both creatively and business-wise. And yet he died penniless after a lifetime of financial struggle. And he married his thirteen-year-old first-cousin and died a mysterious death at forty. We dig into the life and struggle of America's first master of the scary story and talk about how much easier it is to make a living as an artist today as it was during Poe's time, and so much more, today on Timesuck. Listen to the end of the show if you need an introduction to Nimrod, Chikatilo, Lucifina, Bojangles, Triple M and more (or just want a refresher). Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG, @timesuckpodcast on Twitter, and www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna be a Space Lizard? We're over 2500 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. And, thank you for supporting the show by doing your Amazon shopping after clicking on my Amazon link at www.timesuckpodcast.com

We like dark tales here on TimeSuck. Stories of murderous serial killers and accounts of cold leaders madness, some of our most popular episodes, and I get it. Fear's fun when the danger isn't right there in front of you. It's nice to have that little adrenaline spike. Well Edgar Allen Poe clearly loved a little fear himself. He put that primal emotion in so much of his literary work. Poe didn't kill anybody, 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. Considered to be the inventor of the modern short story in America as well, the godfather of the spooky mystery. He wasn't just a mystery slash suspense writer, as the author many consider to be today's master of suspense and horror, Stephen King.

He was the first high praise. And yet he toiled in poverty for pretty much his entire adult 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 Lewis Bayard, who's novel to 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 to thought about no longer even recognizing the influence Poe has over us. You know, we're all the sums of our influences, but we often don't realize, you know, what those influences are, who they are. I'll use myself as an example of this. I knew very little about Poe before this past week, but now it's clear to me that he has influenced me a lot.

I'm fascinated by the world around us, but more with the dark side of human nature than the uplifting a lot of times. I'm guessing you might be too. The first author I fell in love with is a kid, the man who sent me right in my bike to the library time and time again reading every book that he'd ever written. At least the ones they carried 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 to have 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 Allen Poe.

At least not to 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 would have never become so attracted to horror during those important critical developmental years. Maybe my comedy wouldn't have ended up so dark and inappropriate. Maybe all of my jokes would be about the lighter side of life. Ugh. Sounds so fucking boring. Terrible. No dead squirrel puppet jokes. No longing for

the violent deaths of inconsiderate strangers? That's terrible. 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 19th century life, the impoverished life of struggle and death led by the raven Edgar Allen Poe Happy Friday time-stockers happy June it's bonus time. Hope you had a refreshing Memorial Day weekend You know, I hope you're enjoying wrapping up a shorter work week and And if you're at work, I hope this gives you a nice break.

This work can wait. It's time for TimeSuck. I'm Lord Suckitude, the Suck Master General, the Master Sucker, the endcomments, and you are listening to TimeSuck. Welcome to the cults of the curious, Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, or Begonil Lucifina, which is giving you trouble, praisemojangles, praise Michael motherfucking McDonald, triple M, and I hope pudi and judy were well, and I hope that chikotilo is suffering, and I hope those pines are looking up all the delicious puke they can eat. Who are these characters? I know many of you, newer to the show have been asking me that recently

in your emails. So it's end of today's episode. I'll provide a little summary of what the inside jokes are, who these characters are, where they originated, bring everybody up to speed. Not a bad idea, probably to do that from time to time. It's a little inside here on TimeSuck. And today's TimeSuck is brought to you by the search and shred app, a TimeSucker app, which is either just hit or will be appearing very soon on the iTunes app and Google Play store. I didn't check right before this recording.

It should be out today. Just, I mean, fresh, fresh off the app press. The brain behind this app is time-sucker and space and just wonderful human being. I've met several times Josh Wagg. Such a good dude. And what is search and shred? Let's talk about it.

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Doing my first AMA for you time suckers coming up, I've never done one of those, those ask me anything. And I'm doing it via whatpods.com. I was informed that this comprehensive podcast website has named TimeSuck is one of the best comedy podcasts of 2018. I believe that list is coming soon. We'll see where we charted on it, but just honored to be on it. So for the few angry reviewers on iTunes who hate the comedic aspect of TimeSuck, go fuck

yourself. All right, we made a fucking list. You sons of bitches. Thanks to the overwhelming majority of you who do like it. And for the great reviews and ratings, by the way, man, almost 4,000 now on iTunes, which just makes you feel good, man. Just so nice to know that the suck is continuing to spread. I actually finally did some kind of analytics that are day. And we've grown by 50% since January. So amazing, man. Thanks for continuing to spread the suck. It means so much. Word of mouth. It's the best way to keep this podcast going. I will be hosting this AMA for 90 minutes on June 5th at whatpods.com. That's Tuesday, June 5th at 4.30 PM Eastern

time, 1.30 PM Pacific time. And I'll be on there for 90 minutes, answering all the questions I have time to answer. The live link for your AMA is whatpods.com slash AMA slash time suck. I'll include that in today's episode description to link. You can also rate time suck on what pods so people can find the show on their platform. By following another link, I'll provide in the episode description. I guess you have to make a what pods account to leave questions. It's pretty easy to do. I think it's just like you just push it and put in your email address and come up

with the password and then you need that just so you can use their website and you know sign up to be able to ask questions. And you can actually start posting questions now. I know there's some people that already done that. So you can post questions ahead of time. The open house last night, or I guess, sorry, this is coming out.

So I'm recording it a day early. So it would be two nights ago this past Tuesday. So fun. Man, people some time, but I heard stop by from all over the place and spaces. There's it was crazy coming up from California, Nevada, Denver, Montana, Idaho, you know, Washington, Oregon, just all over. And the guys from sweet boxDelivery.com stop by, they brought cookies and pizza bagels.

These guys are awesome in, they're time suckers, and they have a new business, you know, Sweetbox Delivery, which delivers within 100 miles of Spokane and really good stuff, man, good cookies, bagels, pastries. You can get like, you know, savory bagels, savory pastries. And yeah, just really cool, man,

really cool to see everybody just talking about interesting things, having a good time and a level of never-time suckers get together. It's like they've known each other forever. And hardly anybody that came here, just they had ever met before. So that was very cool. Thanks for taking advantage of the Memorial Day sale. Wiping out a lot of the stores goodies.

We'll have the New Danger Brain merch in pretty soon. Excited to talk about that very soon when I know exactly when it'll be in. I mean, the Suck Dungeon again today, recording in advance of the tempi Arizona dates with Reverend Dr. Josh Crel, Queen of the suck, Lindsey Cummins coming in and out of the suck dungeon today. Lindsey and I are heading to Phoenix. Actually, as you hear this, we're in Phoenix.

So if you're listening to this Friday the first, I'll be at the Tempe improv tonight. So I guess the meat was, sorry, recording two episodes, they're recording the Secret Suck in advance and the bonus episode in advance. So I'm doing math like, wait a minute. When is this coming out compared to today in real time? So I guess the meat in the little open house was a couple days ago and I am in Phoenix now

and I hope last night's show went well. Cause I had one last night with Garth, or excuse me, Garth, uh, waiting Garth, Gareth Reynolds from the Dollet podcast. So hopefully I've had a great time with him already. Hopefully we're that we're new BFFs and, uh, and we have more shows tonight and tomorrow night. And then, uh, so get down to the 10 BN prof. And then next week, nation's capital DC and DC flat earth jokes getting told the DC draft house, June 8th and 9th,

June 15th and 16th, the moine Iowa at the funny bone July 12th 28th more tour dates so much more Dan Cummins dot TV. And now I present to you your bonus episode Edgar Allen Poe. Edgar Allen Poe did not invent the tale of terror. Let's be let's be clear about that. He invented the slinky. And if not for the slinky, he would have never written the raven. He wouldn't have had the funds. He used the slinky money to, you know, have the time to be an author. I bet he didn't know that.

I'm almost positive since I just made it up. But that would have been pretty sweet. If the old slinky would have been invented by Edgar Allan Poe. But seriously, he did not 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 Cersei. 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 fifth or 6th century BCE, report Saul's consultation with the witch of Endoa, the witch of Endoa. All these ancient witches, man, doing their witchery. They're probably consultation with the witch of endoa, the witch of endoa. All these ancient witches, man, doing their witchery.

They're probably witches in the same sense that John Mark was a witch. So in the sense that they were not witches, probably just innocent women who didn't deal with the men at the time told them to do. So they're witches. The ancient Greeks, they had more than witches to deal with. They also wrote several accounts of ancient vampires called, other names Distragoy for you strain fans. We touched on that in the Vlad Dracula bonus suck last year. Shakespeare didn't write traditional horror, but he didn't tend to scare his audiences

from time to time during some of his dramas such as Macbeth with a ghost of Banquo, the Scottish man Macbeth paid assassins to kill, Hans Macbeth the Banquet. There are also those three creepy witches in McBeth Man some more damn unruly women shown up It's referenced that Vlad the Impaler suck again. There were scary tales of a bloodthirsty madman Based upon Vlad the Impaler circulating 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. There were tales of, you know, this bad man did these

naughty things to those poor people. There were the crampus tales. Remember tales of a half goat, half demon. We learned about way back in that crampus suck, way back in time suck 14. Those went back to, you know, Germanic pre-Christian folklore, tales of a monster who would eat naughty,

bevery, and children during the end of summer harvest celebrations, and you know, and most cultures had some type of scary monsters in their mythology, tales to scare kids before our bed to make them behave. But again, not horror stories in a modern sense, you know, 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 come 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 there. They're wooden. They're one dimensional. The monster eats children, but you don't know who those kids are. You know, the monster attacks a family, but you don't need personal investment in that family as a reader. I mean, sure,

it sucks the family got eaten. But who is that family anyway? Are they like your family? Maybe, maybe not. You don't know. In modern horror, when it's done in its best, you know the characters very well, right? The better you know them, the more closely connected you feel to them, the scarier it is, the more terrible it is when the bad shit happens to them. Scary because, you know, since they've been more fleshed out, they're more real, they're more relatable.

And now you're able to see yourself, you know, in the story that much more clearly. There's nothing scary than imagining that all the bad shit could be happening to you. Now, it's all funny games, until the monster comes after you or someone who's like you. A modern, crampacy tale, you know, would be more personal. It would be a story, maybe, about some guy with a family in bills. He's getting in financial trouble. You know, he's gonna lose the family home.

He doesn't know how to feed his four kids. You know, he spent 40 pages getting to know this family start to like him The dad works hard, you know, sure he has problems. Maybe maybe he's a little grouchy, but you know he tries his best You know you get to know the mom, you know, she's doing her best to raise the kids You know she wishes that was homeward to help out, but you know they're doing the best they can if problems similar to the problems you have if One kid who won't fucking listen, you know, whatever they have one kid who's easy, you can relate to them. Maybe one of the kids is super sick with soaring medical bills. They're going to financially ruin, you know, the family. And then one night while dad's alone in the office have drunk feeling sorry for his predicament for himself in a weak moment, he kind of secretly thinks that God, it

would just be better for the sick kid to die. It's a horrible thought. But, you know, if the kid dies, you know, the medical bills wouldn die. It's a horrible thought. But, you know, if the kid dies, you know, the medical bills wouldn't jeopardize the future of the whole family. You know, then suddenly when he's thinking this terrible thought he hears a creepy voice, you know, just like, I'll take him, give him to me. I'll set you free.

Then some crampacy-looking demon thing appears, offers the man a life of ease, fortune, and good health for his family, you know? All, you know, the family except for the sick kid, he's gonna take that kid's soul. He's gonna take that kid's soul as payment for the rest, the good he's gonna do for the family. And in a weak moment, the father accepts the deal,

but then immediately he regrets it. He consults an old Romani woman who knows how to break a deal with a crampist demon. You know, how do you know where to find this old Romani woman? You know, who knows about shit like this? Why does she have to be Romani? Who the fuck knows? Right? This isn't a well thought out script, but I'm kind of getting into it. When the man tries to break the deal with the demon and a fit of rage,

Kampus appears, kills the Gypsy woman before some sort of creepy sitting around a pentagram of candles in a dark room, uh, revocation ceremony can be completed. Before she dies, she warns the man that now the the Kampus is gonna come for his whole family, he he's coming he's coming for you all all your souls are lost And then the rest of the tale the crampus You know thing he picks off members of the man's family one by one The only the father and the sick child are left alive and then crampus takes even the last sick child in front of the father Takes him down to hell and then lets the man live with the memory of the deal he made Now look, I know let's not some great horror movie synopsis.

I literally just made it up in a few minutes. I'm not saying it's even terrifying, but it does illustrate the difference between modern and ancient horror tales. There's so many more details. You know, you're inside of the guy's head, you're hearing his thoughts, you're getting to know these people, they're fleshed out, you know, and obviously much more in a real story. And I

wouldn't have even known how to make that shit up had it not been for Edgar Allan Poe. Now to be fair, you know, he didn't usher, you know, the genres of horror mystery and suspense into the modern style of thin air. He didn't live in a vacuum. Other shortly before his time were already writing spooky more modern type tales such as Daniel Defoe, author not known for horrors, best known for writing Robbison Crusoe, a book second only to the Bible, by the way, in the number of languages it's been translated into. He just took it further.

He just took it further and really kind of defined it that much more. DeFoe, by the way, in late 17th and early 18th century, popular English writer, and he penned a number of stories that are today classified as horror tales, one of which is the apparition of Mrs. Veal, published anonymously in 1706, attributed though by historians 2 to 4. And this is an early example of a modern-ish horror tale, this is tale of a canterbury

resident Mrs. Bargrave who's visited by Mrs. Veal, an old friend, former neighbor, who says that she'd like to catch up before heading off on a journey. Paired talks to some books on on death and friendship. Before Mrs. Veal asked 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. On this like weird stuff. She's telling him and after long visit Mrs. Veal says that she got to be going She walks away. She's watched by Mrs. Bargrave until she's out of sight and then later that day Mrs. Bargrave is told that Mrs. Veal died the day before So she was talking to a ghost

1764 English art historian politician and author Horace Walpole basically invented the genre of gothic horror when he published the Castle of On Tronto. Walpole combined medieval ideas about the supernatural with the realism of the modern novel created an atmosphere of terror, a world in which anything could happen and often did. Giant helmet falls from the heavens, crushing con red on his wedding day, immense limbs appear within the castle

itself, mysterious blood flows, a bunch of boogie man wandering in and out of the tail. But even in these tales, you didn't really get into the minds of the main character or the main characters. You didn't sit and stew in the dark recesses of their minds like you would with Poe. The true use of psychological horror through first person narration just hadn't been done in the way Poe did it before, even though it's the way most of these stories are written now. And Poe would inspire other writers,

such as Ambrose Pierce, Pierce, excuse me, HP 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 the first person narrator, the heightened suspense, draw readers into the character 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, therefore more afraid for the primary

characters, right? Again, like I talked about earlier, we're scared when they're scared. And again, with modern horror, we feel their fear, you know? Steven King's it. We experience Pennywise through the lives of the kids, the piece of shit spider clown terrorizes and or murders. Right, if that was a spoiler alert for you, by the way, where's the fuck have you been the last 20 years? The famous Gothic horror novel Frankenstein was written just before Edgreyl and Poe's time as an author.

Got close to what he was doing. It was written by Mary Shelley published in 1818 when Poe was a nine years old. This tale comes close again, but still falls short compared to Poe. It's told primarily through the narration of the character Robert Watson, who never deals directly with the monster Frankenstein. Watson is the is the captain of the North Polebound ship that becomes trapped between Sheets of Ice. His crew sees a dog sled being driven by some gigantic figure. We find out later is the monster Frankenstein that a few hours after seeing this monster the crew finds a nearly frozen man named Victor

Frankenstein who tells his tale of creating the monster to Robert who relays the story via letters to his sister Margaret Walton Seville. Now the horror of the story comes from the readers discovery that a monster has been brought to life by a scientist. However the monster represents, and presents I guess, no real danger to the primary character. One man telling another man's stories about a monster that escaped, and then that man writing letters about this monster to his sister. And this is generally how the reader learns of this monster through these letters. Well, with Poe, he took you directly inside the head of either the monster itself, right, or the man tormented by the monster, which was and is arguably scarier.

Small change yet 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's racked 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 that the narrator's passionate insistence that he is sane

and that these events truly happened exactly the way that he relates them. This uncertainty, mystery adds another layer of terror to the story. I feel of uncertainty and of devolving mental state of the narrator. You wonder if you or someone around you could have their mind unravel in the same way. Well, in addition to being inventive creatively, the life Poe chose to lead was in itself inventive, right? He just pioneering. He tried to make a living purely as an author of fiction,

which was an insane proposition in the early 19th century. It just wasn't done. It had not been done before in America by anyone of note, at the very least. And I know that probably sounds crazy now when now successful authors make so much money, you know, the ones who are household names like Poe, so much fucking money think about Stephen King This is fascinating to me King makes according to Forbes about 40 million dollars a year 40 million a year According to various web sources. He's made about a half a billion dollars half a billion dollars in his literary career That's that's so much money.

James Patterson, according to Forbes, made $95 million in 2016. That is so much money. Can you imagine making $95 million in one year? You could buy two neighboring ocean front or lakefront properties, turned down the homes, build a fucking custom compound, the most extra, like whatever, money's no object,

just the best, most decadent compound you want. You can have a sport court, an infinity pool, private dock, custom speedboat, dream cars, right, and the garage, brand new, pay it all off, everything's paid for completely. Put the rest of the money in an account, pay all of your living expenses going forward

off just the interest of the 20, 30, 40 million dollars you still got set in the account. And then you can set up future generations of your family to be wealthy. Just set up a thing where the money would just never stop coming in. And that's one year's income. But back in the early 1800s, no one in America made that kind of living not even close as a writer. No one made a living as a novelist at all for a variety of reasons. For one thing, U.S. copyright laws were poorly enforced and varied from state to state. I didn't know that. It's pretty easy just to blatantly plagiarize somebody else's shit.

Just get away with it so people did that. It was also a chaotic time for printers, publishers were popping up quickly, and quickly going bankrupt. I mean, this is the time when like towns are popping up and then going under. This happened over and over again, and if the printer went bankrupt,

the authors didn't get paid. Even if the printer stayed in business, authors were just universally just not given very good contracts. And they didn't generally have a lot of money to give them because there's all these competing magazines. If you look back in this era, this magazine would last for two years, this newspaper would last for three years. There wasn't like this distribution infrastructure like there is now. There wasn't Amazon Kindle. It wasn an audible and Barnes and Noble and you know all these local, you know small town bookstores. That just that just wasn't a thing

There was some money to be made in newspapers if you owned a successful one which was very rare usually in like a bigger market like New York or Boston But even then, you know, there really weren't big national publishers making forges and until the late 19th century after Edgar's death, men like William Randolph Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer. So thanks to the times he lived in, Poe was only paid, for example, nine bucks for the original publication of the Raven. He's given nine dollars a poem, and that made him fucking famous.

Like he was a household name after the publication of that. It was massively popular, nine dollars. That name after the publication of that. It was massively popular. $9. That's roughly $277 today. I don't need just for inflation. Over the course of his lifetime, he made a total of 14 bucks off the Raven, about $425 in today's money.

Jesus, man, one of the most famous literary works in American history made him enough money to pay for like one month's rent in a shitty studio apartment in a bad part of a small dying city. That is that is some classic starving artist shit right there. And Poe actually is one of history's kind of classic examples of a starving artist. So fascinated by the relationship between art and money. And you know, I guess selfishly just because that's how I make my living. So fickle man, so fickle.

Think about this. Four of the movies Adam Sandler. And you know, I guess selfishly, just because that's how I make my living. So fickle, man, it's so fickle. Think about this. Four of the movies Adam Sandler, Adam Sandler has made since 2015 have a 10% or less favorable rating on rotten tomatoes. They are arguably, and I know very well, very well, that art is subjective, but they are arguably terrible fucking movies, like terrible. And yet, and yet he made 50 million dollars in 2017 off with terrible movies

2015 to the ridiculous six from Sandler has a 0% favorable rating from critics on Rodin tomatoes 35 critics Affiliate it was Rodin tomatoes reviewed that movie Every single one of them fucking hated it all of them Not a single critic thought it was just even you know average But when it came out in 2016 the most streamed movie in the history of Netflix 2010's grown-ups made over 162 million at the box office 10% of 165 critics thought it was bearable.

Thought it was just watchable. 90% were like, fuck that movie. Sanders wealthy beyond anyone's wildest dreams and he's arguably not very good at making movies. As far as ones that are like critically acclaimed, potent have enough money to buy a second fucking coat. He was critically acclaimed in his lifetime. Uh, he was famous in his lifetime.

And he, he did not have money to buy a second coat. He had one coat money. Think about that. I'm guessing all of you listening could scrounge up enough loose change if you needed to have two coats, especially right now, his coats coats are cheap as hell because it's not coat season. Poses starving artists, also international copyright laws that just didn't exist when he existed. Like for example, if you lived in the UK, you could reprint an American author's book as many times as you wanted and not pay them a dime.

There was no nothing legal to be done. And that happened. That happened specifically to Poe. He became wildly popular in Europe, much more so than he was in America, and made approximately zero dollars off of all his books, being sold over there. Fuck, how angry would you be?

Can you imagine, man, like, I feel like, like if you're like, hey man, royal blood is it, that's a good band. So is Muse, I like it. Florence and the machine, that's solid shit. Now what I do, I wanna print up some albums and open up a record store and just sell their shit and not pay them.

You could do stuff like that back then. If I suddenly found out I was huge in South Africa or the UK, if I was somehow selling hundreds of thousands of stand-up album downloads, I would be stoked until I found out that some other asshole got to keep all of that money. And then I would wanna find out where that asshole lived and I would wanna murder him.

Poe earned some total of $6,200 for all the fiction he ever wrote, total, over about two decades. He made a total of $191,000 adjusted for inflation over two decades. That is less than191,000 to just a firmflation over two decades. That is less than $10,000 a year. He was a tortured artist who led a tortured artist's life. Now, let's examine that life in detail with today's Time Suck timeline. We're marching down a time, some time line. Edgar was born on January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born Edgar Poe.

The middle name will come later, and we will see why soon here. As parents were actors during an age when they didn't really make much money either. So the life of a struggling artist was something not totally foreign to Poe, as in his DNA. His father was 25-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, and 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 his rumor to have died of consumption, tuberculosis, the following year in 1811. Consumption, man. Be a big theme in Edgar's life, unfortunately, would affect his life greatly. We talked about TB at length in one of my favorite sucks, the Doc Holiday Suck, bonus episode 16. His mother was 20-year year old Elizabeth Eliza Arnold Poe a British stage actress who had come to America to act as a young child with her mother who was

also an actress. Her mother had been a stage actress in London. A lot of artists in the family tree and Eliza had debuted as an actress in Boston at the age of nine and then she toured up and down and the east coast there in New England was very well received critically. A review in the Portland Herald said, Miss Arnold in Miss Bitty exceeded all praise. Well David and Eliza had another boy two years before Edgar was born, his older brother William Henry Leonard Poe. And Edgar would go to hate William for getting two middle names when he didn't get even one Some literary scholar cite Edgar's anger over this slide as his inspiration for writing the Raven

That's nonsense There's no mention of Edgar being mad about William who actually got it went by Henry for getting two middle names when he can get any How great how great would that be though If that specifically was what fueled the career of Edgar Allan Poe writing so many dark tales. Why am I mad? Why am I so brooding and fall on? Can you imagine being born into a world with no middle name only to find out later that your older brother had not won?

But two middle names. Can you understand the rage that would build inside of you when you realize that your parents had put three times the thought into your brother's names is they had put into your own? A boy cannot thrive. And only one thrice to love of his brother. Damn you Henry, damn you William, damn you Leonard. That is what truly quotes the raven.

And he squawks it ever more ever more. I changed it in my poem to never more because I wish that someday I could forget the pain of those torturous three names that haunt me so. Now, 1810 Edgar would have a little sister Rosalie shortly after his father abandoned his mother. Rosalie would also not be given a middle name. Well, hers would come later. Hers would come later. Just like Post, her middle name,

Mackenzie would come later. So you know, maybe that ease the pain. On December 1811, Edgar's mother Eliza would die of consumption and orphaned her three kids. So that's not fun. And sadly, all three of them would be separated and be raised in different homes. At the age of two, tragedy has already entered Edgar's life

in a major way. He's been abandoned by his father, orphaned by his mother, both parents are dead, separated from his siblings. I mean, 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.

That's how she got her middle name of McKenzie. She'd be raised under the close care of her new guardian sister, Ms. McKenzie, a lady of elegant manners, accomplishments, and well-educated. Rosalie was raised with a first-class education, group in high society, in accordance with her adoptive family's means, correspondences between Poe and several relatives make it clear that Edgar and Rosalie just really weren't close. She also may have been developmentally delayed or cognitively impaired, which could help explain kind of some distance in their relationship.

His Poe would have a fairly close relationship with Henry, even though they lived apart, but he hardly mentioned Rosalie in his letters, seemed to avoid the topic of Rosalie when others brought it up. She would live the longest by far of the three siblings, reaching the age of 64 and dying on July 21st, 1874. Edgar, excuse me, was sent to live with John and Francis Valentine Allen in Richmond, Virginia, and they are who gave him the middle name of Allen. So that's how he became Edgar Allen Poe. Edgar's mom Eliza Allen, uh, or excuse me,

Edgar's mom Eliza, Eliza Poe had died in Richmond. And it seems that her acting friends in the area did the best they could to find homes for all the three kids. I wasn't able to determine if anybody knows exactly why David parents took only the oldest son. Uh, and then, and then the other two kids live with non-family members. Maybe he smelled the best, you know? Maybe, who knows? I mean, who knows? Just throwing it out there.

Maybe Henry smelled like lavender, but Rosalie and Edgar smelled like sulfur, and the rotten clump of hair, and dirt, and rancid food that sometimes you pull out of a clog sink. You ever smelled that? It's fucking unbelievable. You'll dry heave immediately if not throw up. On the one hand, you know, it's hardless to do that,

but on the other hand, who wants a fucking stinky kid? You know? I mean, that's gonna negatively affect your life for nearly two decades. Now, if your house smells like rotten eggs, rotten hair and food goo, instead of, you know, poporee, 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 society labels you a child abuser, just because you prefer the smell of paint to sulfur. And since paint always had lead back then, now your kid's brain damaged. So now you got a slow, stinky kid, even harder to race. I guess I'm trying to say is, maybe the grandparents had good reason

not to take in all the kids. I guess I'm really trying to say is, sometimes my kids stink, and I don't like it. Monroe's sweaty socks after softball practice might actually be able to strip paint off of walls. It's undonely. But 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 and abandoned the family. So maybe an unfair was actually why he left and maybe it was also because acting critics loved his wife, but hated him. That was something that was probably causing arguments in the couple.

He was not regarded as a talented actor and allegedly suffered from severe stage fright, which makes you wonder why he even did acting. But maybe David's parents were only convinced that the oldest child was definitely their son. Maybe the only had energy for one kid. I don't know. Based on letters Edgar would write John Allen. Sounds like his grandparents considered taking him in as well, but maybe felt like John

could give him a better life. Maybe John just couldn't take two kids. So maybe Edgar was the one who got picked and then Henry was the one. They just didn't get picked. I don't know. I'm doing a lot of speculating right now. Back to the facts. John and Francis Allen, the couple who took Edgar in, were childless. They were excited to have

a toddler around the house. John initially was anyways. Francis was reluctant at first, but then she would come to a door Edgar. He would, Edgar would have a more complicated relationship with his adopted father. John was a Scottish immigrant and a successful tobacco merchant who was not overly affectionate. And he expected Edgar to follow in his business footsteps, and then was chronically disappointed in Edgar when Edgar didn't want to do that. Edgar did seem to have a close relationship with his mother Francis up until her death. John Allen, born in Scotland, 1794.

At the age of 14, he moves to Richmond, Virginia to live with his uncle, who was a very successful merchant. John works for several years as a clerk for his uncle before starting his own business as that tobacco merchant. He marries the much admired Francis 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, at least in his youth.

And it was from the Allens again, that he got his middle name, went to Edgar Allen Poe or Edgar A Poe, it was never legal actually, legally his name remained Edgar Poe, because the family had never formally adopted him. Edgar's relationship with the Allens again was complicated. There were different type of people than his birth parents were.

As parents, even as dad there, as uncritically acclaimed as he was, was still a big name amongst actors, both as parents were, but actors were just not held in high regard by high society at that time. In a way, I think if his parents, like his mom being a really good actor,

it's probably similar to being like a really good carny today, right? His mom, that kind of weird sometimes that you can be really, really good at something, but then society doesn't really care about it. That's always unfortunate. I feel like, right, Karne's get that. Like what if, what if you were like the best tilt

to world operator on the Eastern seaboard? Somebody probably is, you know, the best at that. And just no one else gives a shit. No one in the greater society just gives a shit. What a weird talent to have that would be. You know, because like human nature, you know, you're proud of what you do, especially for the best of what you do. That would suck though, if it's just viewed as pathetic by most of society. Dude, is it true that your mom is a carny? Carny, go fuck yourself Ted, you arrogant judgemental prick. My mom isn't just a carny. Becca,

silverback, Lupinstein is one of the most respected, if not the most respected name 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. Jesus, sorry Pete, I had no idea.

Hey, why is your nickname Silverback? Cause she's built like a fucking gorilla Ted, like a Silverback gorilla. Do you have anything else to say? Because I got elephant ears to move. All right, they're not going to sell themselves. Anywho, Edgar's biological parents, poor, artistic, dramatic, his adoptive parents, rich, stoic, business-minded, and post-show, poetic talent is a young teen. It was discouraged by John Allen,

rather than encouraged or nurtured as it would have been by his birth parents. Yet he becomes an author anyway, interesting argument for the nature side of the nature versus nurture parenting debate. In 1815, when Poe is six, the Alan family goes to Britain where Poe went to Irvine, old grammar, and boarding

school in Scotland. Sounds terrible. In 1816, Poe rejoins his family in London, where he studied at Manor House boarding school and stoked Newington for the next four years. Also sounds terrible. Based on letters sent from John Allen to Edward's schoolmaster, he seemed to be a good student as a young child. And a letter dated March 21, 1818, John writes,

except 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 so you know so far things are going good when Edgar is young, does he's told, doesn't live at home, and a letter to his uncle dated September 28th, 1818, John writes, Edgar is growing wonderfully and enjoys a good reputation who's both able and willing to receive instruction. He's a good boy! Between 1820 and 1822, depending on which source you come across, the Allens and Edgar

travel back to Richmond, Virginia, and in 1823, Poe meets and falls in love with Jane, Stith, standard, the mother of one of his classmates, not weird at all. He would later write his first real romantic love, Sarah Elmera, Reister, that Jane was the first purely ideal love of my soul. He told Whitman that Jane was inspiration for his first version of Tehelen, a poem he named after her because she reminded him of Helen Troi. Poe would say standard was the truest tenderness of the world's most womanly souls and an angel to my foreloin and dark in nature.

Multiple sources, it's heard that Poe read her, some of his early poems, and that she gently critiqued him. Standard was described as a kind and high-percentive woman, a woman who suffered bouts of melancholia and was near the end of her life, pretty obviously

mentally ill. But Poe, you know, he adored her. And it isn't believed this was some sexual romantic love. You know, he's a lot younger than her. More of an adolescent crush who's smitten with Jane and Jane thought Poe was a sweet boy and Jane was kind to him when he was at odds with his adoptive parents, the Allens. And then on April 28th, 1824, when Poe was 15, Jane uh, goes insane and dies of an unknown illness.

Some scholars believed that consumption killed her. It just said numerous sources that she suddenly became quote, very ill and died after she gradually went insane. Well, you know, Poe takes the death hard. After her death, he's said to often visit her grave at Shaco Hill Cemetery. So, you know, another parental figure this time, kind of parental, kind of, you know, the beginnings of puppy romantic love figure dies. His relationship, you know, with his father seems to really sower 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 and his uh, adoptive parents, the Allens. November 1st, 1824, dear Henry, I have just seen your letter to Edgar and him afflicted that he has not written you. He has had little else to do for me, he does nothing and seems quite miserable, sookie and ill-tempered to all in the family. How we have acted to produce this is beyond my conception. Why I have put up so long with his conduct is less, 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 much superior education than ever I received myself. So the good boy now becomes a sullantine. Man, I hope to evade that avoid that same fate with my two kids. Don't don't be dicks all the sudden when the hormones kick in Kyler Monroe. Also in 1824, 15 year old Poe then meets Sarah Elmira Royster, his first real romantic love. They become secretly engaged in 1825 when she's 15 and he's 16. She was a neighbor's

daughter whose father found him Po po to be unsuitable. And Sarah's father intercepted letters from Edgar to Sarah. She claimed later in life that she received none of them. And we will check in with her later because she does show up back again later romantically, somewhat with Edgar. When she was 17, her relationship to po is cut off by her father and she ends up marrying a businessman named Alexander Shelton who does very well for himself

Ada a character in the first version of Poe's poem Tamer Lane published in Poe's first book of poems two years later in 1827 by a 19 year old Poe was inspired by Sarah and Again, this is not the last Poe would see if Sarah more on her in a bit and so you know, he's, he's not having, not having the best teenage years, right? This is, this lady, he thinks is so awesome. She dies. And then, you know, he gets his first romantic love, the first one we come to smitten with, truly like romantically.

And she is blocked from his affections by a father, 1826, 17 year old poet, tensa, the newly opened University of Virginia in Charlottesville, just over 70 miles from Richmond. And the amount of help he was given to do so or lack thereof would cause quite the rift between him and John Allen, though I kind of think eventually lead to the complete demise of their relationship. John gives Edward just enough money to pay for school, but nothing more. So kind of a kind of a dick move where like his classes and books are covered, but living

expenses are not at all. No food money, no clothes money. Basically, John had come to view Edgar as being ungrateful for the life, you know, the John had provided for him, and he was just done with Edgar. So he'd honor the deal. He'd likely made, you know, years prior with Poe's family to raise and educate the boy, but that was it. And there did seem to be some kind of formal, you know, in a sense, I guess not formal,

but some sort of informal, I guess, deal made based on another letter, this one written five years later by Edgar, to John, says January 3rd, 1831, sir, did I win an infant solicit your charity and protection, or was it of your own free will that you volunteered your services on 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, with 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 and to your hands

Under such circumstances can it be said that I have no right to expect anything 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 I will leave the decision of that question to those who know how far liberal educations can be obtained in eight months at the University of Virginia. 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. How you let me return, my reformation had been sure. As my conduct the last months, gave every reason to believe, and you would never have heard more of my extravagances.

But I'm not about to proclaim myself guilty of all that has been alleged against me, in which I have hithorough endured simply because I was too proud to reply. I would boldly say that it was wholly and entirely your own mistaken parsimony that caused all the difficulties in which I was involved while at Sharnasville. So clearly, John and Edgar have a complicated relationship. Right? There was, or at least Edgar believed there was, strongly, some sort of deal made.

You know, there's a letter written between his grandfather and John, which I got to say seems somewhat unlikely, not that a letter was written, but unlikely that Edgar really was like the favorite kid, but then this guy was like, no, no, I can give him a better childhood because his brother Henry was not raised in poverty. His grandparents did have money. And if he really was his grandfather's favorite,

why did his grandfather just only take Henry and allow him to be, to be raised by these other people. I mean, Poe was known to be an imaginative young man, one who romanticized his family. You know, so there could have been a deal like this or it could have been just, you know, how he kind of wrote the story in his head. You know, it's, it's easier for him to believe that John Allen that he had this great opportunity with his grandparents, but then John Allen came and made all these false promises and then fucked everything up for him.

Easier to believe that lie than the possible truth that his grandparents might not have cared enough about him to raise him, which you know, would not be fun, especially considering the fact that his father had abandoned him who wants to believe that their father and then their grandfather also abandoned them. And the extravagance is Edgar was referring to in the letter. We're most likely gambling debts Poe turned to gambling while he was at the University of Virginia there to try and raise money for food lodging and clothing Okay, because at one point while attending the University of Virginia. He was so poor

He had taken to burning his own furniture to stay warm Well unable to continue at the University of Virginia He does leave school after eight months that eight months referred to in the letter He's unable to pay gambling debts and John Allen is refusing to pay them. So he flees the state in 1827 when he's 18. You know, he's afraid to get in stuck in a debtor's prison, which was a real possibility. That was the thing that happened to people back then. Up until the mid 19th century, you could be placed in special prisons, specifically built

for people who didn't pay their debts. And you could stay there until you either worked off your debt through labor or until someone paid the debt on your behalf. And you could sit in there theoretically for life, years and years and years, if someone didn't pay your debt. Because how are you supposed to raise money to get yourself out of debt if you're in prison? This is partly why these prisons eventually became illegal. In many instances, you couldn't leave unless the prison allowed you to leave.

The prison grounds, you were able to, you really had to either have somebody pay you the debt or like a family member or find somebody who basically turned you into an indentured servant. Yeah, terrible, terrible, terrible. With the sentence again, until the debt is paid, you could literally just stay there for the rest of your life. So to avoid that fate, Poe and Listen the Army under fake name.

He goes into the army under Edgar A. Perry, he listened Boston on May 26, 1827, claims he's 22 instead of 18. He also released his first book anonymously that year. Still worried about debtors' prison, so he doesn't want to put his real name on it. So a 40-page collection of poetry called Tamer Lane and other poems attributed with the byline by Abastonian. Only 50 copies are printed and the book receives virtually no attention.

But he's not discouraged. He continues to try to learn how to write or to make a living as an author. Still harbors that dream. Poe then serves two years in the army before asking to be discharged in 1829. He eventually reveals 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 adopted father, John Allen. Poe then attempts to reconcile with John in late 1828, but doesn't, or I'm sorry, yeah, late 1828, but John wasn't interested in helping him out of the army. Any more than he had been interested in paying off Edgar's gambling debts. Then John's wife, Edgar's adoptive mother, Francis, the woman Poe called Ma,

who did love him like a son, comes down with a terrible and lingering unknown illness and she dies in early 1829, possibly once again, consumption, although this is not definitive. And back then, people just got sick and died a lot There was I was talking to somebody about that this morning talking to a local history teacher here in Coral Lane about how history is just full of just pain and death Not a lot of conclusive diagnosis

Or yeah with deaths, you know related to illness other than they just got sick They didn't always assign like well, you know, they died of this. illness. Other than they just got sick. They didn't always assign, like, well, they only died of this. It's like, well, they got sick and died. You know, just some family member, like, what kind of sickness did she get, doctor? The kind that gets you died, of course. Yes, yes, but what specifically, what disease was it?

The deadly kind, you damn fool. I know, I know that she died of a disease. You fucking, fucking moron. What disease did she die of? She died of a disease you fucking fucking moron what disease did she die she died of a fatal disease you up at the center of a bitch you come in moron again it's doolent time so now at the age of 20 Poe has had his his father leave him seen the relationship with his adoptive father deteriorate had his his mother die had Had his puppy love friend's mom die. Had his adoptive mom now also die. Small bit of good news comes his way in early 1829.

The death of Francis seems to soften John and John agrees to write Edgar's commanding officer letter stating that they had reconciled their differences. And then Edgar, after securing another man to finish his elisted term, is allowed to leave the army. After leaving the army in 1829, the 20-year-old Poe travels to Baltimore to stay for a time with his widowed aunt, Maria Clem, and her seven-year-old daughter, Virginia Eliza Clem, who's going to become a major figure in the story, Poe's first cousin. Poe called her cis or sissy around this time.

Hopefully, years later, he would not continue to do so. You'll understand soon why I said that. Poe would stay at Maria's home off and on for six years. The house that was often packed with many relatives containing not only Maria, Edgar and Virginia, but also Maria's son, Henry. Another Henry, an intermittent drinker, Poe's paralytic grandmother,

who had been bedridden for two years and Edgar's older brother, William Henry Leonard Leonard now in alcoholic suffering from advanced tuberculosis so much tuberculosis in this episode. Uh, sound like a really fun place to live by the way. Again, and again, no wonder he wrote dark gloomy poems and stories, man. Uh, post second book of poems published in 1829, Al Arraf, Tamalain and minor poems by publishers Hatch and Dunning. From everything I was able to find 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, you know, gave Bo Confidence boost, you know, refer him to him that he did have a talent for writing. And it was the first book Po didn't have to self-publish. However, still not making any money at it. And since his dad is not going to pay his way through life, he does need to get a job. So Poe travels to West Point, the military school, and matriculates as a cadet on July 1, 1830, taking another crack at the military to make some steady money. Initially, it's noted that Poe doesn't join West Point and does well at the academy.

And one biography Poe's time at West Point has him to describe as the class satirist during his time there he conspires with classmate Thomas W. Gibson to play a prank on fellow cadets. I love that he was a prankster. Poe and Gibson tricks some classmates into thinking that Gibson willing a bloody knife had just murdered somebody. It's prank, man. You'll stumble upon a group of friends with another panic friend holding a bloody knife and convince them that you've just come from a murder. Classic prank. After his first term at West Point,

Poe allegedly decides, I guess he wants to leave the academy. So he's happy as there doesn't last long. But again, he's not allowed to leave without John Allen's consent, man. Good God. Why did parents have that much power back then? Post 21.

Why does he need his dad's permission for fucking anything? Such a different time. 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 literally just laughed. I was 21, I was paying for school myself. I'm like, what the fuck am I parents gonna do?

Go ahead, call them up. They'll get a good kick out of this story. I was gonna for school myself. I'm like, what the fuck am I parents gonna do? Go ahead call them up They'll get they'll get a good kick out of this story I was gonna tell them 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 Yeah, I didn't that didn't work for me because it was a very different time things are things are not going well with number Dad number two again John goes from being perpetually annoyed with Edgar to abandoning him in October of 1830 John Alan Mary's his second wife Louise Patterson, and she does not care for Edgar.

Edgar does not care for her. He feels like she's pushed her way into John's life to get it as money. She feels like Edgar is trying to get his money, and she wins. If he wasn't out of the will before, he's out of it now. And which is unfortunate because he was counting on that will money to pay for his ability to make a living as a writer, right? It must have been such an odd feeling to be a struggling artist type and have rich parents.

I guess I mean, you could have it now. I don't know why I'm putting them in the past tense. Must be a weird thing. And I've known people that kind of have that relationship where they don't really make money on their own and their parents support them into adulthood. And they never seem to be that happy with their parents ironically, you know, these people who are supporting their adult lives, and they're always like frustrated with them, I guess,

because they still have like a childlike relationship. But that's got to be tough to be a struggling artist to have rich parents who don't support you in life, but could possibly support you in death, right? Like if you're in the will, it would be so tempting in that situation to kind of root for your parents' death, which cannot be psychologically healthy, no matter how angry you are at them, right? Be hard not to though, in some level, like the motives obvious, what a conflicted mental state that would put you in.

I imagine Edgar must have felt that at certain times his life, like, God, if John would also just die, as long as I'm in the will, then I could fucking not have to deal with his, you know, looking down on me all the time. And I could just not have to take jobs I don't want him, just work as a writer. But you also, you know, you don't also want to feel like a monster that just roots for the death of your parents. But, you know, if your parents not helping you achieve your artistic dream, and they do have the means to really benefit you if they died, kind of hard not to want them to die, but just very tricky mental places to dwell in. Luckily, kind of hard not to want them to die, but just very tricky mental place to dwell in.

Luckily, I do not 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 any time soon. And I don't want to get stuck with this bill, with the bill for his funeral. It would be a huge headache. So no worries for me there. I'm not rooting for his death.

John Edgar would not have a good relationship again ever after John's marriage to Louisa. His father refusing to help him get discharged from West Point. He tries to make his hand as a poet, you know, he's not going to support him to that. Poe takes it upon himself to get kicked out. And so he just basically just becomes a complete dickhead at West Point and just constantly breaks rules. So the little eventually discharge him, which they do in February of 1831. Here's some examples of the shenanigans he pulls to get kicked out.

Conduct roll call for July through December shows. Poe had 44 offenses, 106 to merits. 106 to merits second half of that year. He was not at the very top of the list for delinquents there. He was very close. He refused, started refusing to go to classes or church 66 offenses for missing class in the month of January alone.

He reportedly once showed up near the end right before he got kicked out. He showed up to morning roll call and nothing but his boots. I love that. I love taking it that far. Just a blaze. Just like, come on man.

Just kick me the fuck out already. How many mornings do you want to have to stare at my dick during roll call 10? 100? We can take this as far as you want. I'm not putting clothes on anymore. So, you know, balls in your court. Actually, both of my balls are in your court.

Hey, oh, you just got pund by a dude not wearing pants. Well, after getting kicked out, pole leaves for New York, Hey, oh, you just got pund by a dude not wearing pants. Well, after getting kicked out, Paul leaves for New York, at least is a third volume of poems, simply titled, poems, that book was actually financed with help from his fellow, you know, now former cadets at West Point, many of whom donated 75 cents to the cause,

no one is trying to get kicked out, trying to become a poet, raises a total of $170 to have the book published. And while the book is published again, it makes Poe no money. And he returns to Baltimore to live with his family, right? His aunt, brother, his cousin, the rest, you know, that has to sting to keep coming back to this collection of random relatives. After each failed attempt, it's striking out on your own.

Uh, I got to say though, I admire his dedication to the craft, right? Truly, truly was passionate about literature. And numerous chances to make a decent living, doing something else, live a normal life, and he just kept burning those bridges. For his chance to produce his art, I do love that. More bad news for Poe in 1831, his brother dies of consumption now,

sped up by alcoholism, that August, it's only 24. And 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. And then, while grieving amidst his grief in 1831, he does find love again, a romantic interest. Mary Devaro was a neighbor of his aunt Maria Clem,

and Poe would send over his 10-year-old cousin, 10-year-old at the time, Virginia, Old Sissy, Old Sissy Poo, carry love notes to Mary. In 1889, 40 years after Poe's death, Mary would give an extensive interview confirming that before she had ever met Poe, 10-year-old Virginia appeared on Poe's behalf, showed up in her house, her parents' house, and asked for a lock of her hair. So weird! How creepy is that? I feel like that stuff doesn't happen anymore. Can you imagine, you know, for the female time suckers, you know, you just knock at your door. And also, there's just a 10 year old girl being like, my cousin would like to have

a lock of your hair. He's quite fun. You have a good laugh at that, I imagine. But then be like, get the fuck out of here. You can't have a lock of my hair. And who is he? I got to put him on a fucking, you know, gotta let the police know about that. It's crazy son of a bitch. Well, even weirder, she gives him, you know, the lock of the hair, gives, so gives Virginia the lock of her hair to take back to Edgar.

She's never met him at this point. She stated later 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. Well, Mary stated that one night after they kind of start dating, and they become intimate, Mary, Poe doesn't show up.

So they, so they, the begin relationship after the whole lock of her incident. And then a little while later, Poe doesn't show up one night when he promised to show up, and then later he shows up smelling of liquor. After having met up with some cadet buddies from West Point, she tells him to leave, but Poe refuses. They start arguing, and Mary leaves Poe standing on the street, runs into her house. Poe follows, tries to get upstairs to her bedroom, but her mother blocks the way, tells him to leave. Poe insists on still talking to Mary, drunkenly shouting, I have a right. She doesn't have a wife now in the sight of heaven. Yeah,

buddy, carnal marriage. They've done the deed, and he feels like he has right to do more deeds. They're one flesh now. Well Mary's disgusted by Poe's lustful behavior, and she breaks off the relationship that night, breaks 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 his drunk and sex talk. Mary concluded that he didn't value the laws of God or man. He was an atheist.

He was just as well have lived with the woman without being married to her as not. I made a narrow escape and not marrying him. When a scoundrel young poet was wanting that sweet lady whole action but not wanting to lock it up with the ring. For shame. By 1833, after his early attempts at poetry, Poe turns his attention to prose. He places a few stories with the Philadelphia publication, begins work on his only drama that he ever attempted.

He's only attempted to play Palatine, a few installments were released, and then after some poor reviews, Poe never finishes it. However, the Baltimore Saturday visitor awards Poe a prize in October of 1833 for his short story, Miz found in a bottle and the story went in 50 bucks. Most money, he had made his writer by far and it brings him to the attention of John P Kennedy, a Baltimore guy of considerable means who is introduced, who introduced Poe to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern literary messenger magazine in Richmond. And Po W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger magazine in Richmond, and Poe becomes an assistant editor of the periodical in August of 1835.

And that was usually how authors of the day made money, right? Now, they would write their stuff, submit it, maybe get it published, but they would also have to work for magazines as editors, critics, or regular contributors, and Poe would end up doing a lot of that. Even then, there still wasn't much money to be made. Well, Edgar loses his first job. He loses his assistant editor job after just a few weeks for being caught getting drunk by his boss.

So having just got fired, he goes back to Baltimore again. Back home, getting defeat. He was family, he has there in Baltimore, and then he does what a lot of 25 year old men do. You know, when they've lost their job, they don't know what to do with the rest of their life. He courts his 12 year old cousin, not Kitty. 1834, two big things happen in Edgar's Young Life.

His adoptive father, John Allen dies, and Poe learns that he is definitely, for sure, been left out of the will, and 25 year old Poe expresses love, romantic love for his 12 year old cousin, first cousin, Virginia, Eliza Clampome, the girl he's known as Sissy, the girl he has lived with on and off since she was seven years old. The girl he had passed love notes on his behalf

to the last woman he had dated. What in the fuck? Even for mid 18th century this is weird Eliza would be listed on the marriage document as being 21 to avoid scandal uh when they'd later get married when she's 13 guessing left out the part also on the marriage document about being first cousins man poe went full Einstein fuck your cousin pass it on uh remember how he's also a cousin, fucker, Einstein? Well Poe took it even further, he was a cousin, molester.

He kind of went full Woody Allen, right? He married someone who had known him as a family member when they were a child. Actually, he took it much further than what he did. Eliza was related by blood and only 12, that's my son's age. That's kind of the 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. Did his proposal involve a trail of candy leading to his pedophile layer? What the fuck? Now, in Poe's historical contextual defense, the age of consent did vary in the US at this time from state to state between 10 and 12. Ah, 10.

My daughter Monroe is 10. So clearly a little kid. That's so, that was the legal age of consent. And yes, I did Google what was the age of consent in America in the 19th century, which probably did put me on some kind of watch list for potential pedophiles. I hope it did. I hope it did because that list for potential pedophiles. I hope it did.

I hope it did because that means that actual pedophiles are being put on lists for the creepy shit they're looking up online. Legal or not, what Poe did was unusual for its time. And yeah, the added dimension of them being first cousins made it creepier. Ah, complicating things morally. Moe did seem to really moe. Poe did seem to really love her. And they did remain together until her death.

I was like, I was thinking like, does that make it better or worse? Like, I really don't know, you know? Write in with your thoughts if you have them. Uh, I think of in this situation, like Mary Kay LeTerno. Do you remember her? When she was 34 in 1996,

this then six grade schoolteacher slept with one of her 12-year-old students. A student 22 years younger than she was, a child, a child my son's age, and she gets pregnant, which is so, so, so, so, so fucked up. She was arrested, she pled guilty to child rape, then in 1998, two weeks after she had just spent six months in jail. She gets caught sleeping with the same kid who is now 14 years old and she gets pregnant again. And she has the baby again. Now they have two kids together. She sentenced the seven and a half years

in prison at this time. Hey, two kids with another child. She gives birth in jail, you know, to the second daughter. Then in 2005, after she gets out of prison, they get back together immediately and now the 21-year-old father of her two kids and her get married. And now they've been married for over 12 years. They're still married. Their oldest daughter is now 21 and her dad is 30 with 33. 21, 21, your old adult has a 33 year old father. 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. It would be less weird than what he had done. So now is that more fucked up than Mary

just sleeping with him like once and then never seeing him again or is it less fucked up? Mary isn't believed to ever had sex with or molested any other kids. And same with Poe. Poe isn't believed to ever had sex with or molested any other kids. And same with Poe, Poe isn't believed to have ever slept with or molested any other minor. Just like Mary loved her student, he seemed to really love his young cousin.

So does that make him like a true pedophile? Or did he just like fall in love with one kid? Which is still fucked up. But is it, again, so much harder for me to condemn this when it's not some stranger like popping out of a van molesting kid after kid. So much more confusing when there's an element of what seems to be genuine love is misguided

as I believe that love is. However messed up it was, Poe did it. And then Poe tried to obtain a teaching position at Richmond Academy to take care of his young family, literally young family. His second cousin, Nielsen 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 as in 13. On August 29, 1835, Poe wrote his bride to be. This is such a messed up sense. This is what he 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, I wanna fuck it, throw up. How do you read that sentence? And think, and not think, just, oh my God! What am I doing with my life? This is terrible, this is really bad.

I'm a cousin fucker. I'm a young cousin fucker. I'm a young cousin sissy fucker. Why don't why don't I don't need to write about monsters. I am a monster. Oh, May 16th 1836, the 13 and a half year old Virginia marries the 27-year-old Pope. And then Pope buys her some lingerie for the honeymoon, but she declines to where it's saying she'd feel more comfortable in some way than poop a chance. She would rather wear footy pajamas if that's okay. She also declines his offer of wine and favor of some tropical capri-sun.

Clearly, I made up the lingerie part and obviously the capri-suns were not around then. Just some step. Po does genuinely adore Virginia. He stretches his income to help Virginia pursue lessons and voice and piano. Poe himself tutors her in the classics. Algebra. Dick teaches her and Dick. Poe does not get that teaching job. He is reinstated by white at the Southern literary messenger. He

gets that assistant editor job back after promising better behavior. And he goes back to Richmond with Virginia and her mom. That's even kind of weirder to me, like, you know, mom's along for the ride, you know, so she clearly approved of the marriage. He remains at the messenger until January 1837, during this period, Pope would claim that it's circulation increased from 700 to 3,500. He published several poems, book reviews, critiques, stories in the paper, witness accounts of the time. Do state that Poe did not sleep in the same room as Virginia for the first two years of their marriage. But when she turned 16, or maybe I said two years, maybe like

15, 15 and a half, I guess they began a normal sexual marriage. If they weren't having sex already, it's just, so you know, still creepy, but I guess, you know, I guess different era a normal sexual marriage. If they weren't having sex already, it's just, so you know, still creepy, but I guess, you know, I guess different era at different time. Hopefully they did wait till she's 16. You know, that, you can argue, that's still too young, but it was very normal for that time, and way different than 12 or 13.

Still don't condone it, still creepy as shit. In the summer of 1839, Poe becomes a sissant editor at Burton's Gentleman's magazine. The magazine includes poems, fiction, essays, has an emphasis on sporting life, articles featuring sailing, cricket, hunting, and more. Pope publishes numerous article stories and reviews and hand's in his reputation as a critic as well, which he established at the Southern literary messenger. I keep forgetting to point that out that he also, you know, would work as a critic

where he would review his literary peers who also reviewed him. And apparently he was a tough critic. Apparently he panned most of their shit savagely. And then also I heard his career. He was really not well liked by his contemporaries. How strange would that be? I would hate, there was no way I would take a job reviewing

like other comics albums, you know, and then still keep doing comedy. How awkward would that be to run into them in a comedy club doing a set somewhere? Good, good, good, good set, John. Was it a good set, Dan? Was it? Or was it quote, another wasted effort from yet another overhyped Hollywood it kid one star fuck you comments Also in 1839 post collection tales of the grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes and though he made little money from it It did receive some positive reviews poll left burdens after about a year found a position as an assistant at Grams magazine She had a little bit of circulation Gramss magazine published short stories, critical reviews,

music as well as information on fashion, and they paid the high price for its time of $5 a page. An Edgar would go on to make tens of dollars, writing for them. He would also publish his famous The Fall of the House of Usher in 1839. In 1841, Grams 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 Arthon Conan Doyle's, you know, famous literary detective, Doyle also greatly influenced by Poe. More tragedy strikes in 184242 at the age of 20, Poe's young bride Virginia, Old Sissy cousin, suffers her first hemorrhage from tuberculosis. Poe immediately knows she's been given a death sentence when he sees that blood and he starts looking for his next love.

His niece, Dorothy, moves in with them. He knew of course he'd have to wait for Virginia to die before him and Dorothy, you know, could consummate their romance. And he knew also that he had to wait for Virginia to die before him and Dorothy, you know, could consummate their romance. And he knew also that he had to wait for Dorothy to get older. She had just turned 10 months old recently. And so, you know, he knew for sure he would have to wait until she was done breastfeeding at the very least.

Ah, kidding. Sorry, I just keep thinking of this guy as a pedophile now. Edgar remained devoted to Virginia during her sickness. She begins to lose considerable weight, becomes ill on January 20th, 1842, while playing piano and singing a blood vessel in her throat breaks. Blood begins running out of her mouth. God, that'd be terrible.

She would soon become an invalid after this first, bout of consumption and Poe would struggle to financially provide for her the rest of her life. There's torture for them both. She'd seem to get better, then suddenly she'd get worse. That's kind of how the diseaved work. She'd seem to get better, and suddenly she'd get worse. That's kind of how the diseived work. She'd seem to be doing fine, and then another vessel would break. She'd have another hemorrhage.

More blood comes out of her mouth. Coffin on more blood. And this just kind of happens over and over and over. What a terrible way to slowly die over several years. Pose riding grows darker during this period. Of course it does. His world is constant misery. He's riding also gets better and better,

but financial compensation, you know, still doesn't come. He can barely feed, barely houses, young sick bride. He wears clothes that become not much better than rags. He can only afford, again, I joked about earlier, but truly he can only afford that one coat he would wear for several years. Again, that just so sad to me, that specific, you know,

example, that coat would double as a blanket for Virginia because they didn't have money for blankets, not proper blankets on especially cold days. Geez, man, he began to drink more and more and more. He struggles with alcoholism, the same alcoholism that, helped kind of speed up the demise of his brother Henry and his father as well. And he also writes some of the best shit of his career

who turns to New York in 1843, where he works briefly at the evening mirror before becoming editor of the Broadway Journal, and then later sole owner of the Broadway Journal. He alienates himself, you know, further from other writers by publicly accusing Henry Wad's worth longfellow, the famous poet of plagiarism. On January 29th, 1845, his poem, The Raven, a poem he wrote about his young wife, well, kind of inspired, I guess, by her dying, his thoughts on that appears in the evening mirror and becomes a popular sensation makes Poe a household name almost instantly, but again, he gets only

nine bucks for his publication. And then pose Broadway journal, the publication fails in 1846. He moves to a small cottage in Fortham, New York and what is now the Bronx The home since relocated to the southeast corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road is now known as Poe Cottage a historical protected home historically protected home Virginia dies this cottage on January 30th 1847 and his Poe is inconsolable. He travels to a grave often, all hours the day and night, weeping, grieving, grieving what he considered to be the greatest love of his life, his soulmate for months. Biographer and critics often suggest that Poe's frequent theme of the death of a

beautiful woman would stem from, you know, just the repeated loss of women throughout his life, including his wife. The next year, lonely, Misrable, Poe makes several desperate attempts at love, reaching out to Sarah, Elmira Royce to her again, Amaris Shelton, the old neighbor girl, whose father tore up young Edgar's letters. She's widow now. Her husband had made a lot of money and left her a considerable amount of money, and Poe asked her to marry him, and I guess she said yes, but then her children talk her out of it.

Because there was this clause in her deceased husband's will that said if she did remarry, she would lose roughly $100,000 of his estate. And then they knew Poe would have to take care of her and there's no way he could do that. And we're talking $100,000 in 1848 money, by the way, which is almost three million in today's dollars. So strange. Thwarted again in romance by Sarah's family, roughly 20 years later. Poe also clumsily pursued a married woman named Nancy Locke, Haywood Richmond.

He pursued fellow poets, Sarah, Helen Whitman. He kind of pursued all these women at the same time in 1848. Basically, just asking anybody he thinks he has a chance at marrying him. The other Sarah also says yes, also thinks better of it in declines. He hits up relatives asking if they have any any more young cousins he can groom. I mean, babysit. Then on October 3rd, 1849, Poe is found delirious on the streets of Baltimore in great distress and need of immediate assistance, according to Joseph W. Walker who found him. He's taken to the Washington Medical College where he dies a few days later on Sunday, October 7th, 1849 at five in the morning at the age of only 40. Poe was never coherent

long enough to explain how he came to be found in his dire condition. And he was oddly wearing clothes that were not his own. He said to have repeatedly called out the name Reynolds and his delirium. Uh, the night before his death, though it's unclear like who he was referring to. Some sources say that post final words were Lord help my poor soul. Uh, all medical records have been lost, unfortunately, 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.

So what the hell happened to Poe? That's a big mystery. He was quickly buried. What a strange death for a man who wrote a lot about strange deaths. So what the hell happened to Poe? That's a big mystery, part of a Poe's story. Well, one theory is that 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 to pose injuries.

It is well known that a brain brain fever followed. Other accounts also mentioned roughions who had beaten post senseless. You know, and he was confrontational yet a confrontational personality. So there is a chance that it was as simple as that. That he was out drinking, feeling, you know, fucking sorry for himself. He's having trouble romance. He's, you know, still grieving his young wife's death. He's, you know, smarts off, you know, offends some woman in the bar. And this was, you know, at a time when, you know, if you said some shitty thing to some woman, her guy was just like, well, fuck you, man. And then people were going to step in between you and him and you guys were going to posture for a while. And then it just

kind of goes away. And I'm like, back then, you know, like, duels could break out. You could get shot in the street for that. Or at least, you know, be beaten savagely, which is possibly what happened to him. Eugene Didier wrote in his 1872 article, the grave of Poe that while in Baltimore, Poe ran into some friends from West Point, joined them for drinks, and then unable to handle his liquor became madly drunk,

and then he left to wander to the streets, and his drunken state, he was robbed and beaten by ruffians. Somebody fucking ruffians in Baltimore. Apparently that town was rough long before the wire. Just nothing but fucking ruffians. An alternate beaten theory involves the practice of couping, which I'd never heard about. This shit is so interesting to me, so bizarre. And it seems that most historians give this cause of death the kind of the best Vegas odds of having happened. Cooping was a method of voter fraud practiced by gangs, by ruffians, 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. You know, because they didn't have IDs back then. So voter fraud, extremely common, extremely common in Baltimore around the mid 1800s. And the polling sites where Walker found the disheveled poll was a known place where Cooper's brought their victims. The fact that poll was found delirious on an election day is no coincidence, perhaps. And this also explains better than other theories why he was wearing somebody else's clothes the time was death. You know, they might have just thrown him in a new pair of clothes. But, you don't want to vote, you slapped him around a little bit, making vote again, you

know, get him to get him drunk, make him drink a little bit, throw him in a new outfit, slap him around, and then eventually they, you know, ended up kind of beating him to death. Over the years, the coping theory, again, it comes to be one of the most widely accepted explanations for his strange demeanor, strange behavior, and cause of death. Before prohibition, voters were given alcohol after voting as a sort of reward. And if Poe had been forced to vote multiple times in a coping scheme, that might also just kind of help explain his barely coherent state.

And it's not like that theory can't be combined with other theories. Maybe he did some coupons, maybe then after doing some coupons, some fucking ruffians found him, you know, they probably got pissed when he hit on their nine year old sister or pinched the bottom of their seven year old niece, some kind of creepy shit. There's also a chance he died of rabies because this was 1849 when people still died of rabies. Rabies would explain the erratic behavior he displayed at the hospital before he died how would he kind of crazy and the master of horror taken out by a main g squirrel who knows maybe some ruffian slapped him around maybe is laying in the fucking ditch and the scroll bites him. I don't know.

uh... one of the most recent theories about pose death suggests that uh... he succumbed to a brain tumor which could have influenced his strange behavior before he died. when poe died he was buried rather unceremoniously in an unmarked grave in a Baltimore graveyard. And then 26 years later, a statue was erected honoring Poe near the graveyard's entrance. Poe's coffin was dug up, his remains exhumed in order to move to the new place of honor. And then more than two decades of decay had not been kind to Poe polarize coffin. Little remained of his body, but one worker did remark on a strange feature of his school that there was a mass rolling around inside of it. Now, newspapers of the day claimed that the mass was his brain,

but we know today that the mass could not have been his brain because it would have definitely decomposed. One of the first parts of the body to rot after death, but mass death but mass you pearl american author who wrote a novel about post death uh he's intrigued by this contacts the forensic pathologist who tell told him that the clump could have been a brain tumor or sometimes calcify after death into hard masses so maybe at a tumor uh and there's also a theory that he was intentionally murdered some speculate that he was still talking to that old neighbor girl from his youth, old Sarah, Sarah Elmera, Royster Shelton, and that he had talked her into marrying him, and then he was on his way to marry her, on his way down to Virginia to wrap it all up. Her brothers had caught wind of that and had him killed before he could ruin their sister's life by costing her that hundred grand, that three million in today's dollars.

Gotta say if that was the case, I don't totally blame him. You know, he probably would have ruined his sister, their sister's life, you know, and caused their children to also be poor. But my money's on the coupon. My money's on the coupon and the roughience. And how poetically perfect is it that the inventor of the modern detective story, 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 eyewitnesses long did, we'll probably never know how he died. It was remain a mystery. 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 time stock timeline.

Good job soldier. You made it back. Barely. Death haunted Edgar Allan Poe. No wonder he wrote so much about it. Now before the 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, by the way? I feel like it has to be arguably the most famous poem in American history. I've never been a big poetry guy, but there have been a few that I really love for sure. To me, this gotta be like top 10, as far as recognizable, because I don't know shit about poetry and I, and I know that one, a horror poem, what a cool concept. Then the NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens actually named after that poem, not kidding.

Uh, football team named after a poem. Initially, they had their three bird mascots, uh, were named Edgar Allen and Poe. And then after the 2008 season, Edgar and Allen, where we tiredly even Poe is a soul mascot of the Baltimore Ravens. For the 2009 season, just for random trivia, Poe is joined by two real live Ravens, Ryzen Conker.

Wanna hear a little bit of the Raven? You do, you might not know it, but 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, creepy talking Raven shows up, informs the young man he will not be reunited with his lover in heaven. Raven seems to possess, you know, his soul or at least blocked the rising of his soul. It's left to open to interpretation.

It's fucking poetry. So it's hard to say. Uh, here goes my sample reading of the little, of the first chunk of the raven. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many acquaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded, clearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently wrapping, wrapping 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 rotted ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the moral, vainly I had sought to borrow. From my books are Seas of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore. For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore, nameless here, for ever more. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with fantastic tears never felt before, so that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor in treating entrance at my chamber door. Some late visitor in treating entrance at my chamber door, this is 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 wrapping 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 they're spoken was the whispered word, L'Henor. This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, L'Henor, 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 the threat is and this mystery explore, let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore, till the wind and nothing more. Open here I flung the shutter, when with many a flirt and flutter in their step to stately raven of the stately days of your. Not the least, Obecians made he, not a minute stooped, not a minute stopped or stayed he,

but with me and of Lord or lady, perched above my chamber door, perched upon a bust of palace just above my chamber door, perched and sat, and nothing more. And then, you know, pretty soon he quotes never more, and then he just keeps saying that never more, never more, never more, never more, never more, never more, never more, for the rest of the poem. So, you know, apparently, back in the mid 19th century, that kind of shit just scared the hell out of people.

But it is, he sets us really kind of, you know, creepy vibe, definitely throughout the poem. I think it is spooky, right? The rhythm of the words, the word choices, tone of dread and drewness. And that poem made a post- celebrity of sorts. Kids would actually follow him in the street after that was published shouting the raven and never more. Well recently, this is pretty cool.

Another poem was found previously unpublished that I think is actually scarier, more dreadful. I think it would have made Poe an even bigger literary star in his day if it would have been published. And it was called the Butcher. Here goes a little bit of this and then we'll get out of Poe tree, excuse me, recitation. A bit of the Butcher. Wet sheets and the broth of Beats. The Butcher dreams of forbidden meats. Softly.

Softly. Cold village nights bring docked lights. As as the butcher looks for the young to fight. Softly, softly. A few cuts in 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 wrestle. Softly. Softly. Will you teach him now? Dare you mock the butcher with his evil grin and his soft shamecock

Taffly softly The butcher's rock hard now which means you're gone. What is big deal? He asked your corpse. Do you like my poem? softly softly There you go. Little chickatilo poe, Poe. Huh?

Who's chickatilo you asked new listener? A piece of shitty, crane serial killer. Who's become a recurring character on the show because we time suckers have a super fucked up sense of humor and I love it. No idiots at the internet today. Instead I just, I devoted that time to write that little ditty. Write a little, right?

Little chickatilo, Poe. And again, you can learn about him at the end of the episode. Oh, that was fun. That was fun for me, at least. I hope you liked it. So Po, what an interesting life. How tragic in so many ways. What dedication to literature he had suffered so much for his craft.

I do admire that about him for sure. I love comedy, but if year after year, it just left me flat broke. If I didn't have the money to buy a second fucking coat, I don't know if I would have second fucking coat. I don't know if I would have stuck with it. I don't know. I admire how much he stuck to his guns. You know, he critiqued his contemporaries harshly, even though that was going to, you know, hurt his career further. You know, he was very brutally honest with them, which is a, you know, kind

of a cool trait. Now, there's definitely a lot more ass kissers than there are ass kickers out there in the world. The young cousin marriage is hard to reconcile. That's unculturally, but are uncomfortable, excuse me, but artistically, what a giant, what a pioneer. I mean, he shapes so much of modern American literary culture, which in turn has shaped so much of our film culture, which in so many ways just directly shapes our culture. Would there be goth kids without Poe?

Would there have been Hitchcock? Would there be all the police procedures? think about how popular those shows are, the lawn or the CSI franchises. In some way, all of that traced back to Poe. You know, would that stuff still be here without him? Or, you know, would somebody else have just taken his place and we'd be inspired by them instead of him would be kind of in a similar position today? I don't know.

Maybe, maybe not. You know, how much of a difference can one person make and make long after they've died? It makes me think about my own, you know, very small, comparably artistic legacy, you know? You got to take it seriously. Who knows how these silly little jokes might influence other people? Who knows how this podcast might change somebody's life? You know, based on your emails it already has changed some of yours.

And then now your lives could change someone else's. Never think about that like the butterfly effect. Think about that with your life, how you might change the future. Will it be through deeds? Will it be through influence? You know, maybe you don't do something directly, but maybe the way you raise your kid. Or maybe the influence you have on some other person, some friend, some coworker could be fucking game changing, magnificent.

And then they end up doing something they would have never done had they not encountered you. You know, maybe you'll invent something that will change the course of human history or maybe your invention will lead to another invention that does. So I guess what I'm trying to say is get out there and kick some fucking ass time suckers, right? Do something with your trips around the sun,

shape the future, shape it in a good way. And try to do that with as little cousin fucking as possible, if you don't mind. Time now for some top five takeaways. Time, suck, top five takeaways. Number one, Edgar Allen Poe changed the writing and publishing world before Poe. Not many were able to make a living off a solely writing

and no American, not at least anyone of note had been able to make a living off a solely writing, and no American, not least anyone have not had been able to pull it off at all. 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 today. Number two, Po introduced the first recorded literary detective in the murders in the Rue Mork. The detective character would lead to become the prototypical detective we know of today.

On a side note, a lot of people cite the word detective wasn't in existence in 1841. For Poe to use and describe in his lead character, but it has actually been proven that it had been printed in 1840. So while he may have invented, not may have, he did invent the literary detective, he didn't invent the word detective. Number three, Poe is considered by many to be the first master of the literary suspense and mystery genres

and his unusual death is a mystery to us still. Number four, Poe married his first cousin when she was 13 and he was 26, so fucking gross. In addition to a literary genius, he was also an incestuous creep. Why do people have to be so complicated? Number five, new info. You can find numerous celebrities such as James Earl Jones, Darth Vader, if you don't know, prolific horror actor Vincent Price, doing their reading of the Raven on YouTube,

my favorite is Christopher Walken. Do yourself a favor, listen to at least some of Christopher Walken's reading of the Raven. It's nine minutes long, and as you would expect, it's fantastically unusual. When I listen to it for added comedic effect, I like to imagine Christopher Walken

playing the random, totally unnecessary electric guitar riffs you hear throughout the reading. Time suck tough five take away. Edgar Allen Poe. He's been sucked. I sucked him as if I was a teenage cousin. I'd fun on that one. Nothing to another's, but really had fun on that one. Hope you did too. A big thanks to the time suck team Harmony Velocamp, Jesse Doebner, Alex Dugan, Reverend Dr. Josh Crel, the Biddle XR team, Danger Brain, Merch Maestro, Eric Radiker, Queen of the Suck Lindsey Cummins, huge thanks to two new members of the Bojangles Research Department team.

Good boy, by the way, Bojangles. Good boy. Those two new members are Kai Beamer, the Humble Space Hemtress, and Nick Winsle, her lizard high priest. You two killed it. Thank you. 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 for the next space lizard topic as far as

voted in. 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 monthoting section of the App and website. How do you vote? You become a $5 a month Patreon supporter of the show and you kick ass as a Spaces visit. And the Golden State killer, man, we know you're just suck on a still unraveling case, so this suck will be a ripe for some updates.

This piece of shit allegedly committed at least 12 murders over 50 rapes and more than 100 burglaries between 1974 and 86. He was also known as the East area rapist, the original night stalker. He or someone claiming to be the gold state killer taunted police and press with his crimes. And then the crime stopped in the case when it called for decades. But investigators and investigative journalists never gave up. And on April 24, 2018, just over a month ago, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department arrested 72-year-old Joseph D'Angelo, charged him with eight counts of first degree murder,

and then on May 10th, charged with another four 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 are going to be solved with DNA evidence? We're going to dig into the life in crimes of America's current criminal obsession in just three days time. Close the Raven. And now let's find out what you suckers have been drawn to this past week with some time sucker Update, get your time, sucker updates. All right, starting off with an update on an update. Let's continue to discuss what it means

to be a virtue signaler, right? It's a big term in 2018. MI a virtue signaler. Not necessarily says time, sucker, David Randley. David wrote in saying, I'm sure someone else has already said this, but just in case, this is regarding the 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 we're not so you're not virtue signaling in my opinion because that is what we all signed up for your take on the topic So you're not virtue signaling in my opinion because that is what we all signed up for. Your take on the topic. You know, like if you took a hard left turn from Joan of Arc and said, the Holocaust was really bad, you guys.

You know, that would be virtue signaling. Either way, love the show. I saw you in San Antonio and it was the funniest standup I've been to. Hey, Luciferina, yes. Thank you, David. Thank you, San Antonio sucker. Well, I liked the distinction you made.

People saying something without being prompted. That makes sense to me. What a good example, right? It would be ridiculous if during today's episode on Edgar Allan Poe, I suddenly just out of nowhere stopped to say, hey, you know what, you guys? I was just told that rogue warlords are killing kids in Africa. And I just gotta say, I don't like it.

It's not cool. Shouldn't kill kids. Shouldn say I don't like it. It's not cool. Shouldn't kill kids. Shouldn't make them fight and wars. It's wrong. I don't care. I don't care what you know people think about that. It's not fucking cool. So anyways, what Poe did as far as increasing a character psychological presence. Yeah, that's a great, that's a great way to determine what virtue signal is when it's without being prompted. People are just randomly throwing in like, I don't like, that's bad. A lot of warranted French pronunciation updates that are rolling in from my Joan of Arc suck. First one from Time Sucker, John Harvey.

John says, Lorde's suckitude, am I 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 is guillom de macho. Guillom de macho. Uh, geom, excuse me, geom de macho. Yeah, there we go. Hard G is in ghost or gas. And he said that geom is a, is French for William. His music is actually really trippy. He's famous because he was one of the first people in Europe to write anything that sounded like that,

give it a listen, keep sucking, John. Well, thank you, John. Thank you for that help. I did listen and it is pretty trippy. I could only take a few minutes of listening to Geome here in the suck dungeon. So it feels like you should be listening to him like a giant cathedral or on some medieval battlefield.

Maybe the kind of music you'd listen to, when you made love to a medieval maiden inside some castle in the 14th century. Uh, yes, and time sucker Jake Barrett also pointed out, yeah, the French equivalent of William Geome, uh, had an English pronunciation update coming as well from super suckers, excuse me, Jeffrey. Jeffrey writes greetings master, uh, greetings suck master, excuse me. Just listening to the Joan of Arc episode and wanted to shoot you a message

and clarify the pronunciation of one name. You mentioned Jeffrey of Monmouth's history of King Arthur and Merlin. And again, the name is pronounced Jeffrey, not Joffrey. And that's what I said in the episode. I said Joffrey. It's a weird one I know. I can't tell you how many times people have used Joffrey

and ask me just to be clear, this time sucker's name is spelled the same way. Just G E O F F R E Y, which is pronounced Jeffrey. And I guess people say to our super sucker Jeffrey, oh, like the guy from Game of Thrones. And he says much like my last name, I'm cursed, hope this helps, hail Nimrod. And yes, Jeffrey's last name is Assar. Man, hail Nimrod, Jeffrey. You're getting your Jeffery's last name is Assar. Man, Hale Nimrod, Jeffrey, getting your first name

and last name butchered. I guess more likely your first name is butchered and your last name of Assar is just mocked. Assar, that's a, yeah, that's a tough one. You can never start a law firm with two other lawyers if their last names are liquor and whole, right? Can't do that. Hey, I'm Jeffrey.

I'm here on behalf of liquor, ass, or an whole. Not going to be taken seriously. One more cool medieval update from Andrew Bailey. Andrew says, you mentioned the British longbow man in the Joan of Arc sucked. Did you know 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 longbow and inflict maximum pain on their galaic neighbors, hail Nimrod. Well, you know, I had forgotten about that, Andrew. Thank you for reminding me. I've been told that many years ago and then blanked and, yeah, historians disagree on whether or not this actually happened, but according to legend, and they did happen, that they would pull back their bows, those two fingers, and then they would show the fingers

to the enemy like, ha, fuck you, I can still kill you. And in Britain and some other commonwealth nations, that is how you kind of flip somebody off. It's like you used the middle and index fingers, you bend the other fingers at the second knuckle, and then with your palm facing yourself. So it's basically a backwards peace sign. That can mean like fuck you still in the UK.

And again, yeah, legend does hold it, it counts from the hundred years war. And when the barters would show that they still have the fingers to kill. I wonder where the middle finger in America come from. I don't know if it derived from that. I haven't looked that up. If any of you know, that'd be a fun update as well.

Where did we get our fuck you? Where did it go from, how did it go from two fingers to one? I don't know, up. If any of you know, that'd be a fun update as well. Where did we get our fuck you? Where did it go from two fingers to one? I don't know. Let's find out. And that's all for this week's Time Sucker update. Stay tuned for those character summaries now. The next time, suckers, I need a net. We all did.

All right, Time Sucker, maybe you're new to the game. Maybe she's been a while since you thought about our cast of Strange Characters. Who the fuck is Nimrod? What's up with the Chikotilo reference? Well, I'm here to help today. Let's start with the oldest gag in character in the Time Sucker canon Michael Motherfuckin McDonald. This joke goes all the way back to Time Suck 22, which was Al Capone's Valentine Day

massacre. The initial seeds for organized crime in Chicago were sewn in the late 19th century by a gangster who happened to be named Michael McDonald. He was actually Michael Cassius McDonald's. At the time I was working on that episode, I was listening to a lot of Yacht Rock on Pandora, and then they made me think of the musician, Michael McDonald's. And then I randomly snuck in me singing one of his songs. Just minute, by minute, by minute, by minute, all they holding on? Maybe that one, maybe another one, but I stuck in one of his songs. And some people thought that was funny, some others hated it. And it just cracked me up, and I felt like doing it again and again. And I would just, I came up with the term

McDonald's, somebody. So time suckers would then complain. They got McDonald's. McDonald's it, excuse me, because his songs, you know, can get stuck in your head for days. And then I just became a gag. And then later he became Michael Motherfucker McDonald when he showed up in a cameo in some other episodes fighting communism. I just randomly assigned the attribute that he was a communist freedom fighter. It's funny to me. He morphed into this kind of government agent secret assassin type time traveling ass kicker

who also happens to have the voice of a yacht rock angel. Basically, the joke with Triple M, as he's now come to be known, is that he can do no wrong. He's kind of like the Doseseckis, most interesting man in the world, combined with the old Chuck Norris jokes, combined with Grammy-winning Michael Motor, fuck him, you don't. Nimrod is the second oldest joke in the time-sector mythology, and also the oldest non-joke ever for he's an immortal god.

Now, but he's the god of time-sector, and he originated in the Scientology Suck, where I was trying to talk about how you, you know, and when I was talking about how, you know, Scientologists get mad that people don't treat their religion seriously. And I'm like, well, yeah, we don't get to just make up whatever God you want in the modern world.

And just immediately expect people to respect your right to worship it. And as an example, I talk about like, well, what if I just, you know, made up some God Nimrod, some giant space sass quatch with the size of a galaxy, the head of a chubacobra who rides a black unicorn with flaming suns for eyes, who demands that I stomp in the skulls of a conqueror spandals

once a month to prove my obedience, right? And then I get to live in his forever and his heavenly ball sack, one ball being the alpha, one that would being the Omega. And then later episode, the Kurt Cobain suck, I introduced hell as being located in Nimrod's butthole, but I was like, yeah, you know, I can't, if people show up and like, hey man, we gotta rest you, if you stomp too much at Cocker Span, I was like, no, it's my religion. And then ironically, me making fun of one God by introducing another seemingly more ridiculous

God did seem to bring that second God into existence in some way. And now he's here to stay and we hail him. We just, you know, we wait to hear what his will is first. So hail him right. After a while then, it didn't seem right to have a God, but not a devilish companion. And that's where the Lucaphina came to be. Lucaphina first appeared in a bonus episode 9, the Salem Witch Trials time suck, one of my favorites. When she was introduced as an explanation of why I mess things up from time to time, why my mush mouth messes things up? Well, it's not my fault, it's Luciferina's fault.

And I brought it up by thinking that example of, you know, how it must be nice just to be able to blame any bad thing that happens to you on the devil. Like, God, I tried to get there, but the devil has been back and messing things up for me. So that became kind of Luciferina's initial character, you know, and then it was this initial thing of Begon Luciferina. It was revealed later that Luciferina was Satan's sister, the only entity devil is afraid of. And then

however, then she morphed over time and became less evil and more mischievous. She became the succ symbol of sexuality. It became emerged with my fantasies of pinup models, right? No one's sexually to Lucifina with her pinup curves and her sultry style of dressing up in fishnet stockings and heels. And why does she dress so seductively so she can't distract us, right? She distracted me away from focused on the suck. Again, no mistakes from my fault. It's all Lucifina's doing. And then she just became kind of beloved by a lot of time suckers and

it went from begun to hail Lucifina. Bojangles, sweet Bojangles, the first star of the suck, uh, the good boy. Uh, he's a complicated character. Bojangles is the third oldest character. He became the show's mascot and he showed up for the first time in the Marilyn Monroe suck over a year ago. First appearing as a one-eyed, three-legged, canine leader of a pack of feral pit bulls. So it made some crazy joke in there about Marilyn Monroe's.

I think it liked her. I think she was like adopted. I'm trying to remember it's been a little while, but her brother, it doesn't really matter, but it was her brother or brother through adoption. I think it was my first misdirect actually, where I said that he'd been eaten by wild dogs. And I was like, just kidding. And then the dog thing kind of got in my brain.

And then it became about jangles. And then later became known that he's an immortal god. He wants to he wants to know fought Zeus tens of thousands of years ago in this battle that caused the city of Atlantis to fall into the sea and the Atlanta suck during that fight that's when he lost his eye lost his leg and then he started working with triple M from time to time on covert government missions James Ingram there's nothing he can't do he's arguably the toughest character the most tenacious I doubt even Luciferina can really fuck with both jangles. Right?

She may have actually fucked him now. He's also a hit with the ladies of all species. Right? He's also somehow become the head of research. And he also beats me up from time to time. He doesn't like what I'm doing with the suck. Or he just doesn't like what I say about him. He basically does whatever he's wanting.

He's the coolest of all the characters. He's like a badass Tom Hardy character in three-legged, one-eyed pit bull form. And he can do more without a leg in an eye than, uh, then, you know, most people can do with all their limbs, both the rice. He's become a symbol of hope, really, right? Don't complain about your disadvantages. Right? If Bo Jangles can get out there and kick a lot of ass, miss an leg and down an eye, what's your excuse? That's what Bo Jangles does. He's fucking inspiration. Uh, Pudy and Juju, who are those knuckleheads? Well, they showed up more recently in the Stalin's 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 and their comic mythology are revealed. Basically, Pudy and Juju are roommates who argue a lot and have many adventures. They're known mostly for catch phrases, such as put it in your lunch box, surely. Two little two, did a poony. And no matter how hard they fight, they always seem to work things out in the end. Just like we do here on TimeSuck, right?

They're symbolic of you can disagree, you can argue, but then you work shit out. And their TimeSuck show within a show. And then there's Chiquitilo. Oh, Chicatilo. Arguably the most popular time suck character. Also, it's worst. Chicatilo originated, of course, in the Andre, Chicatilo butchered of Rostov episode is biopic.

The real Chicatilo is a Ukrainian serial killing piece of shit who puts a death in the 90s after killing over 50 Russian citizens, mostly women and children. Somehow we soften this monster, turning into a lovable yet still murderous character. The real Tilo suffered from impotence, but also strangely loved to masturbate, which I just found very funny.

He was caught masturbating by co-workers, by some of the students. I'm guessing by members of his family, even though that was never explicitly said, but he couldn't get hard unless he was attacking somebody. So usually he was just jerking off and he was really into it, a semi-limp penis. He even jerked it off during his trial.

Shame cock, if you will. And so, you know, he turned into this character who doesn't understand why people just get so upset about him jerking off his limp dick in public. And he has his own catchphrase. It's what this big deal. A jerk soft to shame cock and quon, I bother no one.

Eat, go, eat, enjoy your meal. I'd be over here joking, no one bother, no one bother. As time has gone on, he's just gotten weirder. And I think he's a good example. If you know what, you can cry about terrible things in life, or you can laugh at him. So we laugh at the darkness here on Time Suck, and Chica Tilo is a terrible dark thing,

and we laugh at his expense a lot. And then maybe one more piney's, there is the piney's, they come up a little bit with their terrible puke song. You know, well, I learned about real piney's in the Jersey Devil episode. It's a term akin to hillbilly that was historically assigned to the role and generally uneducated residents of certain parts of Jersey's pine barons, which is a large chunk of thick forest and central New Jersey. And for a time, especially like early 20th century, late 19th century, inbreeding was rampant among this population, like it was a real problem.

And hygiene and proper nutrition was low. And so, you know, I wrote a little ditty about a New Jersey governor being so disgusted when he came to check on the Pine Barons. As a side of one piney, they literally threw up on her face. I said, they were so unfortunate looking, he vomited all over their dirty piney faces faces and these two degenerates, these two pinys, far from being offended, were happy to have a free meal. And they licked most of his puke off each other's faces and then out of each other's beards and then they fucked right in front of him, both making steady eye contact with the politician while they did it. And then the moment they were done, a newborn gremlin popped out of the woman's butt, snatched the startled governor's wallet, ran up to a tree with it. And then the moment they were done, a newborn Gremlin popped out of the woman's butt, snatched the startled governor's wallet, ran up into a tree with it.

And then the Gremlin's parents broke it out into a little banjo to it. Eh, look at here now, I got some pig, tissue pig, I ever did lick, and I'm a woman's beard. Well, look at here now, with the full belly, I made a bump baby with the woman, oh my, and the's wallet, we got, you, ha! Now, either a Piny or some version of that song or both tend to show up occasionally here on the Suck. And there's countless other little jokes here and there, that you know, just come back from time to time to see chickens and other random things. So far, those are the main ones.

And I hope that brings you up to speed a little bit. I know it's way more fun to be on the inside of an inside joke than on the outside. And that's all for today. That's all for today. Have a great weekend. Don't set your romantic hopes on anyone still in grade school or younger or related to you unless you yourself are in grade school or younger and then still not when they're

related to you. And keep on sucking!