Martin McClellan
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Martin McClellan
@hellbox.bsky.social
220 followers 220 following 270 posts
UX & Design: @factal.com
Novelist/ish
Once, Seattle Review of Books co-founder
Type fan/fan type

martinmcclellan.com
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hellbox.bsky.social
Apple Music appears to be showing alt-image text for Pink Floyd albums instead of cover art.
A screenshot of the Apple Music Pink Floyd page. It shows the layout with "Latest release", "Top Songs", "Essential albums", and "Albums", but all of the artwork has been replaced with terse alt text. For "Essential Albums" it has: * "A wall of white bricks with red graffiti" for The Wall. * "Two men in suits shaking hands one man is on fire" for Wish You Were Here. * "A prism refracts light into the spectrum" for Dark Side of the Moon. * "Four young men viewed through a Kaleidoscope" for The Piper at the Gates of Dawn". For "Albums" it has: * "Four men walk across the ruins of Pompeii" for "Pink Floyd at Pompei * "A man rows across a sea of clouds" for The Endless River (Deluxe Edition) * "Two giant metal faces in a field" for The Division Bell * "Ultralight flys over rows of hospital beds on a beach" for A momentary lapse of reason (2019 remix) * Rows of hospital beds on a beach" for A Momentary Lapse of Reason
September 8, 2025 at 9:12 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
My favorite part of the bible is the Parable of the First Person Shooter
Screenshot of a video game store featuring game titled “Jesus Simulator”. The illustration shows white Jesus ascendant in heaven, angels looking up at him as he glows and looks up to his godly father represented by billowing clouds
August 31, 2025 at 4:37 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Screen capture of a movie credits title card from the movie Airplane! Text reads “Stephen Stucker as Johnny” and shows the actor looking mischievous in the control tower after unplugging the runway lights.
August 7, 2025 at 4:01 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Picture of Nick Cave in profile singing, microphone in hand, in the audience, people in the foreground reaching out to him
May 13, 2025 at 4:40 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
The illustration reference must have been this trading card we made. I’m in the blue shirt and illustrator made me front and center. Pat, with the speaker on his head, made it to the repair bench with a sawed off arm in the drawing.
A trading card picture of a bunch of people, the staff, sitting amidst a pile of vintage Fender amps. It says “The Trading Musician”
May 3, 2025 at 9:17 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Here’s an ad from the mid 90s when I worked at The Trading Musician (rip). It ran in @thestranger.com, which was famously known for @dansavage.bsky.social’s column and kink-forward personals.
A newspaper advertisement shows a detailed comic of a dungeon with BDSM themes. The picture shows a man being spanked with a paddle, weird sex robots, a businessman clawing to get out, a man being pegged behind the counter, and a lot of other weirdness. Hand lettered text reads: “Get out the whips and handcuffs! It’s The Trading Musician’s Fetish Guitar and Equipment Sale Acoustic contact mics that can be mounted on anything. (ANYTHING!). Strange-shaped electrics…Fat keyboards from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s & 90’s! Touch the infamous IRON CROSS GUITAR! MEET SINGLE PERSONS WITH SIMILAR INTERESTS! Check out our necks, bodies, tubes, speakers, microphones and cases! Learn new positions in which to hold your guitar! Don’t just fantasize about better equipment; go out and get it! Try our new twisted stomp boxes & vintage sex machines! Circle-jerk in the drum shop… used sound systems for your special events! Instructional videos and how-to books! Black leather straps with spikes… 5908 Roosevelt Way NE, Seattle Washington, 522-6707 * Ask about our torture chamber basement treatment * Sessions available with our dominatrix owner (Robin von Bartlett) * *Special rates for collectors who can’t play a G chord!!!* * Mention this ad and get a free lube job on your guitar Illustration by Tracy • Lettering by Jeri Francis”
May 3, 2025 at 9:13 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Yes! We posted pictures of clouds. We could do that here, too. Call it #cloudsky? #cloudblue? #bluecloudskycloudcloudcloud?
Picture of pretty clouds on a deep blue sky over apartment buildings, looking east from Queen Anne hill in Seattle.
May 2, 2025 at 11:03 PM
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1982. The future was anything we wanted it to be.
Picture of book titled “The Design of Medical and Dental Facilities” by Jain Malkin. A sticker on it has a hand written price of $10 from PATM (Page Against the Machine bookstore)
April 18, 2025 at 3:24 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Finally!
Screenshot from the trailer of the Apple TV+ show Murderbot that shows a pink planet with gold fancy type over it that says "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon"
April 9, 2025 at 4:14 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
In a different class, later, I had to brand and create collateral for a convention. I decided to make a convention for conspiracy theorists called CONSPIRICON. Here's a bad photo of a poster I did for it.

Of course, that's a sugar pill.
A bad photograph of a poster that shows a giant capsule pile, half red and half white, with a logo for CONSPIRACON 2002 on the pill. Text on the poster says "How much can you swallow?" and then, below, gives some faux location and time information for this fictional conference.
March 28, 2025 at 11:39 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Trompe toi’l’oeil
A picture that shows a clean white toilet with the top down. To its right an empty sanitary seat cover dispenser. An accessibility bar right above it. And then, above that, is art. Painted on the wall is an image of a bakery window. On the viewer side is a window box bursting with flowers. Three shelves hold. Cakes, cinnamon rolls, breads, cupcakes, and a bottle of wine with two glasses full and waiting.
March 18, 2025 at 5:10 AM
hellbox.bsky.social
Comic book illustration from the early 70s, in the style of the Archies comics, of young people in groovy clothes ascending to heaven amidst rays of golden light and sparkles. One young woman in front wears a denim mini shirt and green slides, green sweater with a white collar under and a denim cap, blonde hair flowing. To the left, two boys point at her and say “THE POETS!!!!” To the right, a girl in a striped shirt is saying “YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE GOOD”
March 4, 2025 at 3:23 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
While the too-long one chilled for a month or so before editing I dashed off a too-short novella. The first needs cutting the second needs expanding. We start with cutting and second-drafting, tomorrow, a little bit each day until every edit is making it worse.
Picture of a printed manuscript, a sheath of pages. The top sheet reads “53,900 words.” At top right. In the middle text reads “THE HANGED MAN, by Martin McClellan.” The light on the paper is warm.
February 3, 2025 at 4:04 PM
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"What are you fighting for?" RIP 💔
The cover of Marianne Faithfull's Broken English, which has the artist and title in all caps yellow type in the upper left, and is otherwise a dark blue tinted duotone photograph of a woman's face with her arm shadowing her eyes, a cigarette between two fingers, the tip neon pink.
January 30, 2025 at 8:44 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Seven years ago I took a photo of a very Lynchian sort of character sitting with that sign.
At the Bob's Big Boy restaurant in Burbank, a woman sits on a bench wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. She has hair past her shoulders, and it's primped up a bit in an 80s style. She's leaning on her left knee, in front of her, the Bob's Big Boy character stands tall, polished in red-checked overalls, holding a burger in one hand over his head, his astro-boyish hairdo gelled to a point in front, his white t-shirt pinstriped with blue lines.
January 22, 2025 at 12:42 AM
hellbox.bsky.social
Did you know moles, when they eat an earthworm, hold it in their teeth and use their paws to squeeze out all the dirt the worm has inside before eating it?

Kind of like Google used to do with bad information before they served it to you.
Screenshot of a Google search summary. It shows a picture of a mole, the animal, poking out of a mole hole. It says: "AI Overview: Moles are [highlight] noncancerous skin growths that appear when pigment cells cluster together.[end highlight]." It says more about moles, the skin growth, not the animal.
January 10, 2025 at 2:50 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
Here is a noted horrible man of history, Alexander Graham Bell, whose death helps us remember that all bad men die, kissing his wife Mabel Hubbard Gardiner Bell, as she cosplays as a pyramid.
An old photo from 1903 of an old man with a large beard in a suit kissing a woman in a white blouse and long skirt who is standing inside of a framed pyramid shape, with many sub-pyramids breaking up the space. At the bottom of the photography is wax pencil scribblings, probably index numbers from some library or another.
January 8, 2025 at 9:22 PM
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Oh thank you! I’ll seek that out. Glad to know it’s true.

Also, ai sucks.
Screenshot of Apple summary of a Bluesky notification that reads “Mike Fragassi focused on wholesome comedy after being unnerved by his performance”.
January 3, 2025 at 6:26 AM
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In space nobody can hear you roll
Photograph of a stack of books for the sci-fi horror game Mothership. The top book has a line illustration of a person in a space suit holding another person whose chest has been burst open, gripping their hand. It a Says MOTHERSHIP: SCI-FI HORROR RPG, WARDEN’S OPERATION MANUAL. in the background are standees of a big bug monster, a spaceship, and a person holding a gun. Behind that is a box, black with gold line art that has the MOTHERSHIP logo.
December 28, 2024 at 5:57 PM
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Otis and Ripley
Photograph of a white dog sitting on a couch seemingly enthralled with looking at a tv screen where Sigourney Weaver is in character as Ripley from one of the Alien movies.
December 27, 2024 at 3:48 AM
hellbox.bsky.social
My grandfather was happily married but in an alternate world I feel like would have been king of the dating apps
Vintage photo of a man in a marina standing next to a large marlin strung up to a rope. He’s smiling, holding a fishing rod in white slacks, dress shoes and a nice shirt
December 26, 2024 at 1:54 AM
hellbox.bsky.social
Me too, sign
A photograph of a neon white traffic sign taken on the dark with the lights of the city motion blurred behind it. The sign says “SPEED LIMIT 40. S O DOWN” (the L and W are burned out on the sign)
December 20, 2024 at 4:38 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
First draft, done. Started 4 years and 2 days ago. Way too long at nearly 180k words, but the novel is there waiting to be carved and sanded.
Photograph of a stack of letter sized paper a few inches thick. Upper right, text reads “179,400 words”, and centered it says “HOLDING SPACE by Martin McClellan”
December 19, 2024 at 11:21 PM
hellbox.bsky.social
I picked up this 1984 book called The Erotic Tongue, I love a good lexicon. I was surprised to find the publisher wouldn’t even spell out the words it talks about in the pages.

So. Many. Asterisks.
A hand holds a book called The Erotic Tongue: a sexual lexicon, by Lawrence Paros. It as a faux corner peel in the bottom right that reveals: “The last word on s*x”. A speech balloon in the upper left reads “terrific, entertaining, well researched, and just plain f**king good” - George Carlin A photo of a page from the book. The text reads: …By then, "nice" people had forgotten completely how to f**k, and the word had become our principal four-letter outcast. Mere mention of it caused flesh to creep and cheeks to flush. Few people spoke of it openly. Only the kids were telling it like it f**kin' is. And for them it was only beautif **kingful, far f**kin' out, and outta f**kin' sight. A Word of Caution Because it was unwelcome both at home and at school, many of the kids took the Big F to the streets. There they created the mean motherf * *ker, a legendary figure who attained prominence in the sixties, as in "up against the wall, motherf* *ker!" It wasn't long before the ranks swelled to include the jive motherf**ker, the dirty motherf**ker, and the exotic muh-f**kah. This is to say nothing of your basic, no-frills mother (also mutha). Generally considered the worst forms of verbal abuse, these expressions can also become terms of respect, as when one street-corner man wishes to pay homage to another's toughness. They should, however, only be used with great care, or you too could end up calling for your mamma. Fighting Words It was on the battlefield where the f**k found itself most at home and was accorded the greatest respect. Young men who had been taught to eschew the Big F in word and deed because of its obscene nature were suddenly confronted with an even greater obscenity - war. Knowing no other way to describe the
December 12, 2024 at 5:06 AM
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I should have used “Month”
Screenshot of a signup form asking for a password and confirmation. A bar on the bottom, which is red, says “Password is: Week”
December 11, 2024 at 4:51 AM