The Jar represents death. Black, evil, dreadful DEATH.
    DEATH, DEATH, DEATH, DEATH, DEATH, DEATH, DEATH. And more DEATH.
    The ingredients we just happened to choose are actually an ancient recipe for unearthing lost, evil souls, it's sealed opening is a portal into an black dimension that represents the opposite of everything good and wonderful in this reality, and it emits an "aura" that allows a glimpse inside the ninth layer of HELL.
    Do you know what DEATH looks like? feels like? Smells like? Domenic and I do - now.

    We like to think we are the type of people who actually do things rather than just talk about them. Sometimes it's better to just talk about them.

    During the sealing of The Jar on June 4th, Domenic and I noticed a particular, indescribable feeling that seemed to be rising in our souls as we first started unwrapping the ingredients. We noticed a slight feeling of dementia when we smelled the dead animals and snouts 'n ears. They say that the smell of dead flesh strikes a subconscious, pre-natural fear inside the minds of the living (this is a tactic often used in keeping wildlife from eating the plants in gardens - small bags of dried animal blood are often hung on plants: deer and bears smell 'death' in the area and keep away).

    Immediately after sealing The Jar, Michael, Domenic and I sat down to watch TV. We were unable to laugh at the pleasant sitcoms. After a few hours,Michael noticed that maggots had crawled out of the rat and had formed a squirming colony at the top of The Jar. As Dom and I looked on in fascination, I noticed a feeling of uneasiness coming over me. So did Domenic. We brushed the mild nausea and schizophrenia up to the smell of the rat and predicted that the effects would wear off by morning. Domenic, who had to wake up at 6am for work the next day, went to bed. I decided that I needed to get away from The Jar and the apartment and go out and be around people. So Michael and I called Gregory and a bunch of our friends and decided to go out to The Cock, a local bar that has a party on Sunday nights we all frequent. On the way there, amidst the fresh Summer air, I started to notice small gatherings of rats in the dark streets that nobody else seemed to notice. Every once in a while, out of my peripheral vision, I would spy a squirming army of gigantic maggots inside a window... only to turn my head quickly to look and have it only be a cat or a group of people dining in a restaurant window. The Jar experiment had definitely effected me, and it was only getting started.

    When we got to The Cock, I noticed the lights and music had a particularly acute psycho-acoustic effect on me that I didn't usually experience. At one point - amidst the strobe lights, loud music and laughing friends - I swore that I saw someone's head that had been replaced by The Jar. Their eyes and mouth were pressed up against the edge of the inside and the dirty liquid inside sloshed around as they moved from side to side. I quickly looked away and then back again. My imagination was getting the best of me. Boy did I need a beer! Oh wait... Michael brought a joint! That's just what I need - it will relax me! W-R-O-N-G. I took several big hits in a row off the joint and waited for the cool vibes to start soothing my rattled nerves. At first everything was funny and fun. I was having a blast. Then I saw another jar head. Then another one. What ever feelings of dementia and dread that The Jar had awakened in my subconscious had only been intensified by the pot because soon enough everyone's head in the place had been replaced by a disgusting jar - all of them sloshing and jiggling to the music. Did you ever see GODZILLA VS. THE SMOG MONSTER? You know the scene where the protagonist has too many drinks in the disco and he starts to see everyone's heads replaced by fish heads while they're dancing around? That's what this was like. Except that movie was funny.

    Gregory tried to console me; "Mark are you OK?" - but when someone's face looks like the swollen head inside the jar that Jodie Foster found in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, except it's trying to console you and talk to you through the glass, it's not very reassuring. An hour later I found myself fleeing the club in a near panic state, dashing all the way home through the serpentine streets of the East Village like Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski's REPULSION, gasping and flinching at anything that moved (boy I'm getting dramatic with the film references huh?). Because of the Summer heat and the late hour, there were rats everywhere, probably seeking their revenge on me for defiling one of their own.

    I dashed into the door of the apartment, nearly in tears. The lights and cam were still pointing at The Jar, broadcasting the writhing maggots live for anyone who wanted to watch (my brother said he stayed up most of the night watching my cam from Colorado, mesmerized by the patterns the maggots formed on the Jar's inner surface). I didn't dare go anywhere near the cam or the dreaded Jar. I laid down in the bed next to Domenic and tried to sleep - no way was I gonna sleep in the same room with The Jar (where I normally slept). I tried to sleep. Sleep. Try to sssllleeee-e-e-p-p-p-p.. .  .  .    .

    I had a horrible night's sleep. I had lurid, vivid nightmares about big rats and maggots getting trapped in my mouth. At one point I dreamed that Domenic had died next to me and was writhing with flies and maggots - but when I tried (in the dream) to touch him, I couldn't because his body had been sealed inside a giant jar and I could see that his decaying body was screaming for me to help him but I couldn't hear any sound. I had another dream where someone with an ominous voice was leaving messages on my phone-answering machine saying they were going to come into my apartment one night and kill me - slowly cutting off parts of my body and put the pieces in a row of jars next to me. Oh wait, no... that last one really happened.

June 5th, 2000:

    Domenic woke me up at 6am and said that he had "...nightmares about maggots" all night. After Dom left, the morning sunlight streaming in through the blinds offered little hope in lightening my mood. I was wide awake. Everything around me took on an evil vibe. Even the birds chirping outside seemed to be chiming some kind of death knoll. I sat up in bed and looked straight at the brightly lit Jar in the center of the living room - lights and cam all pointing straight at it. I got out of bed, grabbed a giant beach towel (which I later threw in the trash), quickly wrapped it around The Jar, and ever so gently walked the squirming thing into the bathroom and placed it in the bathtub. I did not bathe for two days for fear that I would have to confront The Jar. Domenic had moved out the week before so I was  left alone to confront the growing abyss that The Jar seemed to be constructing around it. I started to ponder experts in the field of paranormal activity and how one would go about contacting these individuals for advice.

June 7th, 2000:

    I ignored The Jar for a day and a half. Forget that I had promised people on the cam that I would do immediate updates. For now, my mental sanity was more important. I discovered later that ignoring The Jar like this only helped it to resource it's power. The Jar would wait.

    Two nights later Michael came over to hang out. As he came into the apartment he casually walked into the bathroom and pulled the shower curtain away to look at The Jar, assuming that Domenic and I had been checking it regularly all along. He marched into the bedroom and said "Wow! The maggots have gotten bigger and there's more of them!!!" This is not what I wanted to hear. I confessed to Michael that I was frightened of The Jar and hadn't looked at it since Sunday. I told him that it was slowly turning into a black hole - sucking in all light, hope and happiness within it's vicinity, and to proceed with caution. Michael agreed with me that The Jar seemed to be emanating some kind of "force" that he could have not predicted on the fun and frolicking day in which we sealed it. We ignored it completely and didn't speak of it again the whole night as we watched movies two rooms away.

June 8th, 2000:

    Domenic had called several times to inquire about the Jar. I told him that The Jar was oozing something VERY BAD. Something that was unsee-able and that was affecting me every minute that I was in it's prescience. I finally told him that I wasn't sure if I would be able to go through with the experiment. I told him that it seemed to emit an evil aura, that I think it had opened up some portal into an antiworld, and that maybe we should call a priest to perform an exorcism (and then head strait to the Ashram for an immediate soul cleansing). He responded for my pleas to banish the evil talisman from the apartment with mild laughter. "Everything's gonna be fine!" he said. He compared me to the Vice magazine people and said I was wimping out. Four days later, on a stormy Sunday night when he actually had to come in contact with it, he would do a complete turn-around in attitude. But more on that later.

    The same night I had talked to Dom on the phone, in an act of defiance or power balance, I quickly (but ever so carefully) lifted The Jar from it's bathtub hiding place and put it in a cabinet in the bathroom. Then I washed my hands with beach and scalding hot water for about ten minutes. Then, collecting myself -  I left the house to go out. I had proved I was not afraid of The Jar. At least I could touch it.

    I came back at about 3am and took a wonderful, long, hot shower for the first time in days. Ahhhh... it felt great! And I wasn't thinking at all about that inter-dimensional portal to Hell, that black hole of death and pestilence, that gateway to man's dark side... resting calmly in the cabinet next to me. Not at all! Everything's juuuussst... fffiiinnneeeeee...  mmm-hmmm!! Now maybe I can get around to taking some shots of it for the webpage like I promised everyone! And study the things inside it and write a report and everything like I said I would. OK - I'll do it tomorrow. Let me languish in this feeling of inner balance that I haven't felt in a few days.

    This feeling wouldn't last for long - the evil power that The Jar had become was only pulling the wool over my eyes, mocking me all the while. The Jar was learning from me. Studying my behavior.

    That night I had a vivid dream that was similar to Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" that concerned The Jar in the bathroom cabinet. I'll spare you the details since you probably already know the story and can guess the outcome.

June 9th, 2000:

    On Friday night, Gregory came over and investigated The Jar for the first time. Gregory didn't like the whole concept from the very beginning, but he was definitely curious to finally see it. His curiosity would eventually help me face The Jar for the first time since Sunday - a big step for me. I confessed to Gregory that I was having trouble even looking at it and he said he could certainly relate. But he still wanted to see it. This would mean I would have to look at it too! When I opened the cabinet for him - we both noticed a subtle odor - like something you would smell in the sewers of Mars - and we instantly retreated. We went back to The Jar - and the smell was gone! Where did it go?

    I think The Jar had the ability to emit odor (and mind-controlling thought waves) at will. It was using them on Gregory and I.

    Michael also cam over that night and we all investigated The Jar for the first time together (on cam - did anybody save those pictures?). We got out two flashlights and took a really, really took a close look at everything. And there was no odor. I felt like I had taken a huge step that night - thanks to my friends. Then we all watched a really sick movie called CORD, about a mad hick couple who chain Daryl Hannah in a basement, impregnate her, force feed her until she vomits, torture her and eventually try to remove the baby by caesarian section while she's fully awake! What a wonderful video choice! I needed something to get my mind off The Horrible Jar.

June 10th, 2000 (Eve of Destruction):

    On Saturday night I expected to have another nightmare. Instead, to my surprise, I had a wonderful dream that The Jar was Pandora's box, and I was Pandora. I dreamt that I walked into the bathroom and found The Jar sitting on top of the toilet. I started to open the lid of The Jar to unleash all the evil spirits onto mankind - but when I opened up the lid The Jar was only full of colorful gummi bears. Suddenly Domenic appeared in the bathroom and I wasn't Pandora anymore - I was Mark. We gobbled up the gummi bears and they were delicious. Suddenly the bathroom transformed and we were both standing in the middle of a beautiful green meadow, the Springtime sun shining 1,000,000 times it's normal brightness all around us. There were fluorescent yellow and blue butterflies all around us and a wonderful feeling of happiness and goodness that seemed to emanate all around us and the universe. Then Domenic and I booth discovered we could levitate - so we danced and frolicked with the butterflies in the gorgeous, re-assuring Springtime sunshine meadow, holding the empty, crystal clear jar in the air with us - it's eternal goodness having been emptied out into the world.
    I jolted awake out of the dream and looked toward the bathroom, where I had left the light on (just like in the dream). The evil inside The Jar had discovered a way into my mind, into my dreams. It was trying to fool me, placate me into thinking all was right and good with it - so it could spread it's pure evil and death from outside my apartment into the surrounding city and the known universe.

    The Jar had to go.
    This was war.

    I decided to strike against The Jar when it least suspected it, but I didn't want to plan too much inside my mind - I would know when the time was right. I didn't want to think about how I was going to do it. Thinking about destroying it would only give it too much information. The Jar had found a way inside my thoughts - and it knew too much about me already. It knew my strengths, my weaknesses, my worst fears, my worst nightmares. It even knew my real age. I would destroy THE EVIL Jar if it was the last thing I ever did. The fate of the known universe depended on it.

June 11th, 2000 (D Day):

    The next day, Sunday (exactly one week from the day we created THE EVIL Jar), was a horrible day weather wise. The wind howled, the rain poured down in relentless buckets, and an unseasonably wet cold infected the city. By evening the tumultuous clouds had unleashed a full-blown, deafening thunderstorm. Mother Nature knew. Inside the bathroom, next to a bare light bulb, The Jar sat...  waiting. Tonight was the night it was going to strike. But little did it know I was going to strike first. Or did it?

    When Domenic bounded in the door soaking wet, he immediately inquired about THE EVIL Jar. Dom hadn't been around The Jar. The Jar honed in on this immediately. It had a fresh mind to mold, a new errand boy to help it carry out it's plot to spread evil throughout the world. It would bypass me (I was wise to it) and convince Dom through it's waves of mind control that had almost gotten me. The Jar would convince Dom to keep the experiment going. It would convince him that my ideas to end the dreaded Jar and it's agenda were childish, and that I was a fool. Don't think Mark, don't think...  don't feed it any more... it knows... just act when the moment comes.

    Domenic gaily skipped into the bathroom to peer at The Jar and it's contents. I grabbed a crucifix, a bible and that giant African sword I have in my living room, and followed close behind. We opened the cabinet. The smell was...  indescribable. Horrific. Traumatizing. It smelled like rotten shrimp wrapped in dirty diapers boiling in agent orange. The kind of thing you can smell again for a year or two after it's over when ever you think about it and it sends chills down your spine and your lunch going upwards. Remember the thing I mentioned before about the smell of death causing dementia? This was that times one thousand.

    The rat had blown up to a balloon, the entire thing was now liquefied and an even brown/orange color (ever look in the toilet after a nasty blow of diarrhea?), and the mushrooms and water chestnuts from the Chinese food were still visible! Everything else seemed to have been liquefied. Domenic mentioned something about air-borne viruses as he held a towel over his face, I walked into the living room to get the cam (making sure to step over my lunch which was now re-deposited on the floor in front of me), and both of us fought of a kind-of low grade schizophrenia that the stench was causing collectively in our minds. We snapped these last desperate pictures, the last record of The Evil Jar:

    I quickly grabbed a WHOLE BOX of garbage bags and told Domenic WE WERE GETTING RID OF IT RIGHT NOW - he didn't argue. I promised to touch The Evil Jar and put it in the first bag (which would then be wrapped in about eight other bags) and place that bundle in a giant Wendy's shopping bag (don't ask) if Domenic would agree to carry it downstairs and gently place it next to the trash on the street for the loud-as-hell garbage men to discover tomorrow (that'll show them for waking me every morning at 4am!). But before we could even get that far...
 

    ...an ear piercing cry seemed to blast out of the walls around us. Domenic and I both stopped and clasped our hands over our ears. The walls started to ooze blood. The floor of my apartment vanished. We were standing on nothing! Suddenly, we could see into the very depths of Hell below our feet. "OH GOD WHAT'S HAPPENING!?!?" Domenic shrieked like a little girl. In a total fucking panic, I grabbed The Bible and tried to recite some passages, but all the text in The Bible was suddenly upside down and backwards!! Heaven help us!

    From far below, we heard what sounded like horses galloping towards us. We looked down to see four horsemen on black horses, wearing cloaks and carrying sieves, rising up to meet us. Domenic and I held each other like shivering lily-livered chickens. The four horsemen arrived at our level and, passing us a mere glance, reached up and grabbed The Jar. "This was not meant for this world!!!" the lead horseman echoed through his skull head in our direction. He then pointed a bony finger at us and said "We are taking this talisman back to the realm from which it came!! It will return to this dimension only once more - on the eve of the last day of mankind's existence in this universe!!!"

    He then shifted his hand slightly to the right and zapped a fireball onto the spot where The Jar had been resting in the now non-existent cabinet. The flames engulfed all around us, I looked at Domenic, in horror, as his face and head began to melt before my very eyes. Then my eyes melted too... but I could still see. I looked to the left, and before my head liquefied, and saw Jesus on the cross, weeping. Weeping Jesus then turned into Tinkerbell on roller blades. The floor dropped out below us (again) and I fell through a black void and into a suburban neighborhood. My head and eyes were intact again, and I seemed to be a small boy. I was on the green lawn of a two-story duplex, in a beautiful neighborhood back in Texas. A small Chinese woman walked down the sidewalk towards me, carrying a blank tombstone. Then she pointed towards the front door of the house. I went inside and into the kitchen. I saw a hot skillet sitting on the stove turned on high. There was a small amount of butter bubbling and popping in the center of the black, hot skillet. I moved in closer to look. The sizzling butter was forming into letters, making out a word for me to read. I moved in closer to see. The word was S-A-T-A-N.

    All went black.

    I woke up on the floor of my apartment with Domenic unconscious beside me. I went through his wallet and then woke him up. We looked around - everything seemed normal - there was no stench. We went into the bathroom and looked in the cabinet. There was a small bush of black roses growing where The Jar had been. Domenic and I both looked at each other - the wraith had ended, we were OK. The Jar was no more.

    We're sorry to everyone who was looking forward to regular updates about The Jar and how it's contents were interacting. We are sorry for the unspeakable evil that we almost let loose onto this world. Many will say we lost in our battle with The Jar. But The Jar was (is?) a worthy and skilled foe, and to win a battle with is surly does not equal glorious victory - but slow torturous death, wailing in brimstone, gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair... anti-life. Vice magazine we feel what you feel! Domenic and I now think about the catastrophic events that might have transpired upon the world every time we trim that bush of black roses growing in my bathroom cabinet. We also thank our lucky stars.