Wednesday, February 29, 2012

LORD FORGIVE US


December 9, 1879:
Met with Blake this evening for the first time. He stood in the shadows to prevent me from getting a clear look at his face. What a vile disease this is. He is a rich man with a cursed condition, but this does not prevent him from trying to better his situation and that of his comrades at the colony.

December 11, 1879:
Blake's proposition is simple: He wants to move off Tanzier Island and re-locate the entire colony just north of here. He has purchased a clipper ship called the Elizabeth Dane with part of his fortune and asks only for permission to settle here.
I must balance my feelings of mercy and compassion for this poor man, with my revulsion at the thought of a leper colony only a mile distant.

April 20, 1880:
The six of us met tonight. From midnight until one o'clock, we planned the death of Blake and his comrades. I tell myself that Blake's gold will allow the church to be built, and our small settlement to become a township, but it does not soothe the horror that I feel being an accomplice to murder.

April 21, 1880:
The deed is done. Blake followed our false fire on shore and the ship broke apart on the rocks off Spivey Point. We were aided by an unearthly fog that rolled in, as if Heaven sent, although God had no part in our actions tonight. Blake's gold will be recovered tomorrow, but may the Lord forgive us for what we've done.

Hey there...

Apologies for not being around much this week. 

Possibly having a relapse with my Crohn's Disease so I haven't really been that fussed with coming online.

I'll catch up with your blogs sometime soon though. Hope I haven't missed too much!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

SHITTY FLICKS: CRIMINALLY INSANE (AKA CRAZY FAT ETHEL)

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.


Long ago, when Ingmar Bergman was making films actually about something, a filmmaker named Nick Millard (or one of his eight aliases) set out to make a chillingly effective horror film—a film that would raise the bar on how much utter terror audiences could tolerate. Criminally Insane, which for the remainder of this review will be referred to as Crazy Fat Ethel, in keeping with the far superior title chosen for the sequel, was a critical delight and box office smash...if you take into consideration that I am a sarcastic prick. Instead, Millard ended up making this first of four truly abhorrent horror movies featuring the very gargantuan Priscilla Alden (star of Birdy as 'Woman on Bench'). Watch as she eats piles of snacks and occasionally stabs obvious mannequins covered in reddish-orange goo. Yes, there's many reasons why you've never heard of Nick Millard, dear reader. Crazy Fat Ethel is one of them. As an aside, I feel it necessary to inform you that all of the "films" Millard made around this time were produced by Frances Millard, his mother...who at that time was also working as a porn star.

When she was 83.

Some titles of her films: 92 and Still Bangin', Aged to Perfection: Part 20,  and lastly, My Grandmother is a Whore: Part 8, which I can assure you is not a joke.

One year for Halloween, Ethel trick-or-treated as "hideous."

At the start of the movie, we meet our fatagonist (LMAO), Ethel Janowski. Her time spent at the Nappa Valley Mental Institute, where according to fuzzy flashbacks she was forced to have electro-shock therapy while unnecessarily revealing the most horrid of sexual extremities, is now over. After the audience suffers through said flashback, in which her shock-therapy session plays out in real time in order to pad out the running time of this movie (a whopping 61 minutes), Grandma Janowski checks Ethel out of the hospital and brings her home to San Francisco, land of the trolley car, TV's the Tanner family, and the gays.

Once home, Grandma tries to put Ethel on a diet, because the sheer girth of her rotund belly enrages whole planets. Ethel glares at her grandmother, somehow gaining weight as she stands in place. Instead of agreeing to these terms, she demands a snack. Grandma says no, explaining to her that excess food could prove detrimental to her heart.

“My heart is just fine, so long as my stomach’s not empty,” Ethel gurgles, citing from her favorite book, I'm Fat, You're Fat: Let's All Eat Dinner Again.

Ethel's mind eventually takes a shit over her inability to fill her mouth with popcorn and cow meat, and so she stabs Grandma for locking up the refrigerator. Grandma dies clenching the only key in her old, old hand, as Ethel repeatedly stabs her and screams, "I want that key!"

The Ethel we had all previously knew and loved is gone. Meet the new Ethel: just as hideous...just as fat...but twice as crazy.

With a whore and a fat-ass psychopath for her granddaughters,
Granny stops to reflect on if she had made the wrong choices in life.

Ethel, looking to stuff her fat mouth with cheese cubes and bacon bits, dials up a local grocer to place an order for delivery. She fidgets on the phone, impatiently agreeing to pay off Grandma’s previously established debt, as she doubles the amount of ice cream usually included. Ethel grins, dreaming of all the drippy food that will soon be covering her moomoo, but she runs into a problem when the delivery boy refuses to accept $4.50 to pay for the $80 bill. Ethel is a good problem solver, however, and stabs the boy a billion times with a broken bottle.

It is at this point that Ethel's sister, Rosalee, rapes herself into the plot. She's a divine little minx who fucks for money, and looks so uncannily like a horse that Sarah Jessica Parker is actually a little jealous. Rosalee's first appearance consists of ringing the doorbell over and over until you'll want the whole world to explode. Ethel finally lets her in after having dragged the delivery boy's body upstairs and into Grandma’s room.

Rosalee barely asks, “What’s all this blood all over the floor?”

Ethel responds, “I cut my foot on some glass.”

To see how much blood is on the floor, and to see Ethel’s pudgy, uncut foot, would draw suspicion from even a retarded infant with a candy-filled brain, but no worries here. Rosalee merely walks past her sister and explains she’ll be staying there for a while and occasionally renting her vagina. You see, it's not unusual for Rosalee to bring home an ugly, strange man to wrap her clam around, but sometimes that's just John, her pimp/boyfriend. But in keeping with her profession, Rosalee will also bring home "johns," on whom she will perform sexual favors in exchange for some financial compensation, or some "nasal medicine." What's deeply frustrating about Rosalee's lack of attractiveness is that her johns, also, are definitely of the "ugly tree" variety, so viewers can't even get temporarily lost in some attractive sex; there is nary an un-ugly face to be seen.

Sure, Rosalee brought home the big bucks... but at what cost?

It's not long before a cop comes sniffing around, trying to solve the case of the missing food delivery kid who recently made a food delivery to a place where a very fat, food-loving woman, fresh from the mental institution, has taken up residence. The cop fires question after question at Ethel, demanding to know the boy's possible whereabouts, but this master deflector provides just the right answer to throw him off track:

“He went left.”

The cop deduces that the boy must have “gone to Tijuana” with the money and leaves, failing at life like everyone having to do with this movie.

It's right around this point where we finally meet John, Rosalee’s horse jockey/lover/abuser. He shows up at her favorite watering hole to insist they continue their relationship of love and domestic violence. For every second he is onscreen, he appears to be on at least five 1970s-bred hallucinogenics.

Despite Rosalee telling him to bugger off, he follows her back to the house, where she continues her cold shoulder technique of avoiding his kisses, even though she has ended up naked on a bed with him on top of her. John proclaims his love, and Rosalee asks, “If you love me so much, why do you beat the shit out of me?”

John retorts, “You need a good beating every once in a while. All women do. Especially you.”

She then welcomes him into her equestrian vagina, I guess deciding he has made a good point.

John had gotten his promotion, found $5 in the street,
and was about to complete the trifecta.

John meets Ethel the next morning at breakfast after she walks in holding a plate piled high with Hot Pockets. He appropriately says, “Jesus…” and looks genuinely taken aback.

Rosalee orders him to be nice, and John agrees, asking for one of Ethel’s treats. She hesitantly hands him one and is about to sob over the loss of her food when that pesky cop from earlier returns to gather further information about the missing delivery kid. Having found out that the boy was apparently a pillar of the youth community, he is no longer satisfied by his own Tijuana theory. He again questions Ethel, and again she shows of her bravura for master manipulation.

"I saw someone with a gun follow him," she says dumbly, staring at the floor.

"Why didn’t you tell me this before?" the cop inquires, suspicious.

"I forgot," she booms in response. And for good measure: "The robber was black."

A black robber in San Francisco is enough for the cop to leave Ethel alone for the moment. She relievedly pats herself on the stomach for a job well done, leaves to “go watch Gunsmoke,” and probably celebrates her cunning with a wheel barrel of hot dogs.

And the movie continues.

"Hey, Ethel...Are you gonna pass the jam or what?"

Ethel eludes Rosalee's curiosity as to where Granny is, why her room is always locked, and why it smells like death. “Grandma must’ve shit all over the bed before she left,” she deduces.

Hideous John threatens to break down Granny's bedroom door, but Ethel uses her noodle and brilliantly suggests, "Do it tomorrow." John agrees and takes Rosalee back to their bed, where he participates in bestiality.
Rosalee’s mounting suspicions eventually catch Ethel's lard-ass attention, but the potential conflict is soon alleviated when Ethel kills her with a large plastic cleaver—the special kind that makes a dull wood-on-wood sound when striking anything.

As we watch in boring anticipation, Ethel sneaks into John and Rosalee's bedroom and raises the mighty cleaver with her meaty arm. She brings it down across John's head, and though its pretty much obscured by some cleverly awful editing, his face explodes into a thick layer of red wall paint. Rosalee manages to sleep through the hundreds of swings Ethel applies to John's head, as depicted by the past-faced cutting. She finally wakes up and neighs to Ethel for mercy. Ethel says something fat and then kills Rosalee, setting in stone her future as horse glue.

Spoiler.

Phew... we can all breathe a sigh of relief. Ethel's Crisco-fueled crimes of passion have saved her tremendous ass for the time being. She continues to kill mannequins that we're supposed to accept are people, eats, and has a dream she is wearing a nice robe and running by the bay. Once waking from her nap, she gets up, kills, and eats.

Much fun can be had witnessing Ethel attempt to hide her ever-growing amount of bodies in Granny's room, all the while spraying air-freshener directly on their dead faces.

And when I say 'much fun can be had,' I don't mean it. Not at all.

After realizing Granny's bedroom is rapidly filling up with bodies, Ethel loads them into a car trunk and drives out to a sea-side cliff in hopes of dumping them into the water. She takes her sweet, fat-ass time performing this task, and we have no choice but to watch the entire trip unfold in real time, because we're watching this fucking movie for some reason.

Upon getting there, Ethel sees that there are far too many witnesses for her to get away with dumping bodies into the bay. She feels it would be in her best interest to get back in the car and drive all the way home, leaving the trunk lid hanging wide open because she's a fucking dickhead. And we get to watch all of this return trip, too, because this movie seriously has more padding than a pre-teen girl.

Once home, Ethel smashes up the stairs, eager to eat something covered in heavy cream. Nosy Neighbor, who catches a whiff of something fierce, wanders over to the trunk Ethel ingeniously left hanging open and sees a mannequin hand douched with blood.

That pesky cop shows up again and randomly enters Ethel's house. If he has done so because he was alerted to the hand in the trunk, it’s definitely not evident, for he walks slowly up the steps without any alarm, and without taking out his gun. He opens the door to Granny's room and sees Ethel EATING the dead bodies that have accumulated, because her belly can hold a lot.

The end.

(Two be followed by three sequels).

TRIVIA!

Priscilla’s role as the fat woman killer was originally offered to Anthony Hopkins, but he passed politely, saying, "you are fucking ridiculous."

"Cake cake cake," Ethel happily sang, moments
before her heart attack.

What I Learned from Crazy Fat Ethel:
  • Ethel is larger than your average bear.
  • Saying derogatory things like "that Jew doctor" is a-okay, so long as your dinner is your hand and an entire jar of peanut butter.
  • Blood can be faked with the most unrealistic of substances.
  • Nick Millard makes movies based on the fact that he knows someone with access to free mannequins.
  • A 61 minute movie can feel like an eternity if you know how to craft something awful.
  • Nick Millard is not affiliated with a single attractive person.
  • The desire to eat normal food and then commit murders naturally leads to cannibalism. (Additionally, dead human bodies are made of chocolate.)
  • Nick Millard's prior history of shooting pornography is unsurprisingly prevalent. However, this time, the ridiculous and tedious set-pieces that would normally lead up to hardcore sex turn out to just be the actual movie.
  • Ethel likes to eat 'Nilla Wafers, pudding, iced cream, eggs, people, milk, pancakes, more pudding, and your time.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Song of the Week #14

David Guetta - Titanium ft Sia


I've been pretty busy and sick this week and really couldn't be arsed to blog much. Hence another music vid for you all to enjoy! I love this song and can't believe I've only just discovered it!

Saturday, February 25, 2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHNNY...

...you cool motherfucker, you.


(And one for fun.)

BEWARE THE CHILDREN

People, especially children, aren't measured by their IQ.
What's important about them is whether they're good or bad...
and these children are bad. 










Ravenwolf.

Friday, February 24, 2012

PROSPECT


Theodore “Tubby” Ellsworth and Jack smith are two criminals on the run, lost in the untamed wilderness. When they stumble across a mutilated Prospector, dying on Indian ground, they promise to give him a Christian burial. The fugitives break their oath and steal the old man’s gold…but that night, the Prospector’s corpse returns to make them pay!
A western-themed horror film entitled “The Prospector’s Curse” has wrapped production near the remote town of Ponty Pool, Ontario. Set during the Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890’s, the darkly comedic short is Written and Directed by Josh Heisie (‘Mail Order Bride’), Produced by Bruno Marino (‘Anything Goes’) and is currently in Post Production in Toronto, Canada.
The talent lineup for “The Prospector’s Curse” includes David Roberts (‘Curious and Unusual Deaths’), Johnny Quinn (‘Mind’s Eye: The Series’), Amanda Ives (‘I Hate Toronto: A Love Story’) and Robert Nolan (‘Worm’).
Rounding out the creative team are Director of Photography Michael Jari Davidson (‘SICK’), and Special Effects Makeup Artist Carlos Henriques (‘Red: Werewolf Hunter’) of The Butcher Shop.
In this blogger's opinion, the world needs more horror westerns.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

DROOL


Filmmaker Jeremiah Kipp was nice enough to pass along a few of his short films. Their style is of the more difficult path to travel - they contain very little to no dialogue. It is up to the visuals alone, as well as the actors' expressions, to carry the story. For what must be low budget affairs, they are all beautifully done. The cinematography, especially, is worth calling out. And Kipp definitely gets points for getting Friday the 13th composer Harry Manfredini on board. His brief score for Crestfallen is somewhat reminiscent of Psycho, which is always a plus.

One of Kipp's short films, Drool, is embedded below. Kipp has been vetted by many of the genre's more offbeat filmmakers. The day you have kudos from both Frank Hennenlotter and Larry Fessenden is the day I stand up and take notice.

Drool is most definitely NSFW.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

LEVITY

Tagged Once More!

kbbuddingwriter tagged me a while ago to do this so I thought I'd do it today

The Rules:

Post the rules
Write 11 random things about yourself
Answer the questions set by the previous tagged person
Create 11 new questions
Tell the people they've been tagged

11 Random Things:

#1 I always order the same thing from my fast food jaunts
#2 I have a purple toothbrush
#3 I use Herbal Essences shampoo
#4 I got my dog Penny on my 7th birthday
#5 I always leave an hour early to ensure I get a parking spot at uni
#6 I think I am the only one who likes the new Facebook Timeline
#7 I love apple juice
#8 I hate filter lights
#9 I can type without looking at the keyboard
#10 I hate the new Blogger captchas even more than the old ones
#11 I hate thinking of eleven things!

Kbbuddingwriter's Questions:

Q1 Do you like how your blog is?
Indeed I do. It may not be the most professional looking but I like it. It's very cute and girly

Q2 Is there something you won't like people to know about your feet?
I don't like talking about feet at all so... moving on!

Q3 What was your lunch?
Beef supernoodles

Q4 Ever been to Santa Fe, NM?
Nope!

Q5 Do you like to read? If so, what genre?
I like Young Adult and Fantasy the best. Though after I finish the current series I'm reading, I might invest in some of the classics

Q6 If you could punch your best friend in the face pretty hard to free your conscience off something, what could that thing be, and would you do it?
Well my best friend is Paul so I won't be punching him at all!

Q7 Love or money?
Love

Q8 Are you straight edge? Why/Why not?
What does that even mean lol?

Q9 Burger King or McDonalds?
McDonalds!

Q10 Are you happy with life?
Indeed I am

Q11 Did you enjoy answering these questions?
It was alright.

My Questions:

Q1 Favourite shape?
Q2 Favourite animal?
Q3 Favourite word?
Q4 Favourite song lyric?
Q5 Favourite food?
Q6 Favourite season?
Q7 Favourite colour?
Q8 Favourite tv show?
Q9 Favourite movie?
Q10 Favourite item of clothing?
Q11 Favourite fairytale?

I tag:

Mynx : Sarah : Mona : Bree





Monday, February 20, 2012

THE DOOR OPENS


Finally got around to see The Woman in Black. A nice, old-fashioned Gothic ghost story. It was refreshing to see a horror film for adults.

Marco Beltrami's film score work is pretty hit and miss with me, but I rather liked his stuff for TWIB.

My favorite track:

Song of the Week #13

Lindsey Stirling - Shadows


Yet another violin piece but frankly, I don't care. It's too cool not to share!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Project Perfect

I saw this on Life of a Sweetaholic's blog and thought I'd do it too...

1. Post a photo that you like of yourself and say in a couple of sentences why you like it.
2. State 3 things that you DON'T like about yourself but say why others may love to be like that.
3. State 3 things that you DO like about yourself.

A photo of myself that I really like:


This was taken by Paul on our first holiday to Rome in 2009. I like it because I think I look slightly mysterious in it and I also don't look sweaty or redfaced which is slightly surprising considering where we were.

 Three things I don't like about myself, turned into positives:

#1 The fact that I have one crooked tooth that makes me self-conscious when I smile. You will be hard pressed to find a picture of me (that hasn't been deleted) with a chesire cat style grin. Despite this, Paul hasn't been put off and finds my smile beautiful 

#2 The fact that I'm five foot three. The only thing I hate about being this height is that it is very easy to look fatter than I actually am. Paul however, finds my height adorable and I do like the term "petite"

#3 The fact that my laugh can sometimes turn into a cackle OR sound like I'm revving an engine depending on how funny I find something. If I find something really funny then I do one of those silent laughs and cry simultaneously.

Three things that I like about myself:

#1 The fact that I am quite pale. For years I was bullied for looking like a ghost but not once was I even tempted to try fake tan. For one, all my bullies couldn't apply it right and ended up looking like streaky bacon. Why the fuck would I want to look like that? I love my pale skin, always have always will. What got me through that particular bullying episode was remembering that Snow White had skin as white as snow - making her a "ghost" too. And look at her, she's gone down in fairytale history as being the fairest of them all...

#2 The fact that I talk with a slight American accent as well as sounding quite posh. I love it. I sound very middle class despite being common as muck

#3 The fact that I have large eyes and skinny wrists. I don't know why but they've always been my two favourite body features.

Friday, February 17, 2012

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME


Reading The Devil All the Time is like watching P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, but instead of your characters yearning for new, misplaced, or rediscovered love, the residents of Donald Ray Pollock’s sophomore novel are only looking to murder, betray, or fuck (both literally and metaphorically). Like the aforementioned film, the characters of Devil are all connected in some way, and most of those ties are built on something depraved and awful. The novel drips with blood, violence, sex, and everything else that makes Pollock's world go around.

The first character we meet is Willard Russell, a veteran of World War II on his way home, memories of his fellow soldiers crucified by the enemies in the South Pacific still weighing heavily in his mind. Despite this morbid recollection, Willard meets a pretty waitress in a diner – and knows on the spot that she will become his wife. It’s a pleasant and even romantic way to begin a novel that soon devolves into acts of depravity perpetrated against both the innocent and the deserving: Animals – even childhood pets – are nailed to crosses in a half-cocked offering to the gods. Hitchhikers are forced to participate in a psychosexual photo shoot, spearheaded by a completely conscienceless couple. Lives are taken for little to no reason.

Taking place in both West Virginia and a charming-sounding town called Knockemstiff, Ohio (both the title and setting of Pollock’s other work – a short story collection), the story spans several years and mostly follows the growing son of Willard Russell, a boy named Arvin who as a child suffered through his father’s mental breakdown after his mother began slowly dying.

While not every character in Devil is a complete sociopath, those that show acts of kindness and grace are quickly punished with a life-shattering occurrence—the death of a loved one, the manipulation of love, or a life of isolation. In Pollock’s world, there is no hope and no love, and if there is a God, he simply doesn’t care.

The chapters are short for what’s most assuredly an adult read—so short in fact that in the book’s 290-something page count, there are over fifty chapters. While I’m sure this was to carry on with the book’s vignette-like depiction, I’m sure it was also to give the reader a break. I doubt there is one sole chapter in the book where a character does not perform an act of evil against another human being, or reflect on one previously committed—and that character’s lack of humane reaction to it.

The Devil All the Time is certainly not for everyone, but for those who aren’t scared of lifting the veil and staring hard into the darker side of life, the journey to Knockemstiff is terribly and disgustingly rewarding.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The Woman In Black: Review

WARNING: THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!


Before I begin, I've always wanted to see the play as I heard it was pretty scary and the story was quite interesting to me. I never got to see the play unfortunately so when the movie came out, with Daniel Radcliffe as the lead, I jumped at the chance. I didn't particularly pay much attention to the fact that it was a ghost story until the opening scene left me dreading what was to come over the next hour or so. 

Seriously, anyone who is not disturbed at the sight of three ten year old girls commiting suicide is not human.

So moving on to the story. A young man, still mourning the death of his wife in childbirth four years ago, agrees to travel to a village and sort out a dead woman's will by sorting through piles and piles of documents at her home. Sounds tedious right? Well it gets better. Upon arriving at the village, he is instantly greeted by a hostile atmosphere as no one wants him to be there.

He eventually goes to the house of the dead woman only to see said dead woman standing in the grounds. As he mentions this to fellow villagers, they panic and yet more children kill themselves. It turns out that everytime someone sees The Woman In Black a child dies in a horrific way. And trust me, they are horrific. One girl drinks poison and another sets herself on fire. The three girls at the start of the film jump out of a window and we learn that one boy drowned himself. We find out that they do this because she tells them to. Cue flashbacks to their death scenes and all you see is her standing in the background. It's freaky as fuck!

Eventually Daniel figures out that the woman he is investigating had a son but because she was insane, her sister took her son away from her. After a few years, her son dies in the surrounding marshes and she vows never to forgive her sister for not saving him. Daniel feels responsible for all the recent child deaths and sets about fixing things.

He does this by finding her dead son's body in the marsh land, nearly drowning in the process and reunites them by burying them together. All is at peace and as he is about to leave, his own son, who was traveling down to greet him, sees The Woman In Black and walks in front of an oncoming train. Daniel grabs him but do they make it? No, no they both die. But his wife is there to walk them into Heaven. This is a very sad ending and I was pissed off that The Woman In Black refused to "move on" so to speak. But oh well.

Now throughout the time Daniel was at the dead woman's house, all sorts of freaky shit happened. I was literally jumping at every. fucking. thing. Two girls who were whimpering actually left the cinema because they were that scared. And at times, I wanted to join them! At one point I had my scarf in my mouth as I was scared that I would let out shrieks lol!

I was also annoyed at the pivotal moment in the movie when a man's phone went off and he answered it! The only justice we had was that at that particular moment, The Woman In Black screamed blue murder and all you heard was the guy on the other end go, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" 

It was fucking hilarious. 

Highlights:
  • The story
  • The fact that I was constantly on edge
  • All the scares
Rating: 5/5

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Guest Post: Mark

Hello everyone, Mark here. A while ago I promised Hazel a guest post, and it was so long ago actually she forgot I was going to do it! I would have left it but I had a sense of obligation, what with being an English gent and all.  If anything I'm sorry I left it this long. I'm also glad that she's the only one who claimed her prize. I have enough trouble coming up with things for myself usually. Though occasionally I come up with something that for some reason or another I don't want to post on my own blog. Typically because I deem it too emotional. Though given how emotional I've been on there lately (due in part to my current real life over-emotionalism) I can't really claim that any more. 

Anyway, what I came up with was a poem, and so I have decided to ask Hazel if I can use her blog to share this poem with you all. So, without further ado, I present "Never" (a working title, I be rubbish with titles)

To say that I am lonely
Would not be entirely true
There are people in my life
Such as you

But when the time comes
To lay my head
All I feel
Is the emptiness of my bed

My arms, they are lonely
My heart, she is weak
My hands, they hold no other
My future, it is bleak

Am I unloveable?
Is beauty not skin deep?
What am I to believe
When solitude is the only love I keep

There are those who say they love me
Many more who won't
I wonder if it's that they can't
Or that they don't

Though what I want
That is plain to see
All I want
Is someone who wants me

When I'm alone in the cold and the dark
When the night is setting in
What I could really do with most
Is the warmth of another's skin

While there is something to be said
About the length of forever
It is nothing
Compared to the length of never

When I got to the end I couldn't resist saying something I came up recently, though someone else may have said it before. "Forever may be a long time, but it is nothing compared to never". 

It was so deep Jessie asked me where I got it from. Anyway, if you're still alive after that, and if you've stopped laughing at my patheticness, I'd like to see you drop by some time. I can't promise tea and biscuits though. Sadly.

ATTACHED LIVING

My parents divorced when I was young, and I stayed behind with my mother in our house while my father temporarily moved to a nearby apartment complex. He remained there for roughly six months before moving out in a hurry. It was many years later that he told me about the strange occurrence he had experienced while living there.

His immediate neighbors were the Thornes, and they consisted of a young woman and her newborn baby. The father of the newborn did not appear to be in the picture. In the first month he lived there, he saw Ms. Thorne and her baby frequently, as they were both in and out of their apartment every day at the same time, apparently maintaining a steady schedule. The baby was always in her arms, cooing away and grasping at the air with tiny hands. My father would smile and nod at them, and he always received a warm greeting right back.

One day, for seemingly no reason, Ms. Thorne broke the routine. She and her baby no longer came and went each day. In fact, several weeks went by – which soon turned into months – and my father had not seen them a single time. He knew they hadn’t moved out of the apartment—he could hear the baby crying through the walls. He had learned for himself after raising a son that infant babies cried often—at all hours of the day and night, and for almost any reason. Because of this, he was patient with the young woman. He did not feel the need to go banging on her door and demand that she quiet the baby’s cries, like some other neighbors would have done. Despite his patience, the crying grew more and more intense over time. He began to wonder if perhaps the baby was ill, and because he was a doctor – he had worked for years in family medicine – he grew concerned. He wondered if maybe the young mother could not afford to take her baby to see a doctor. However, he did not want to intervene, recognizing that it was not his business.

One day at the nearby corner market, my father happened to run into the Thorne woman, who held her baby in her arms. My father approached her under the guise of saying hello, but really wanted to see if he could ascertain just what illness – if any – might have been plaguing her child.

He described the young woman as cordial, if a bit fatigued, and her voice was strained and weak. He made small talk with her, and she politely answered the questions he asked, though she did not volunteer any additional information about herself. Her baby was wrapped in a blanket and a pink knit hat covered her head. She told him her baby’s name was Jessica, who slept soundly as the two spoke. My father explained that he was a doctor and offered to periodically perform check ups on the baby to save her time and money. The young woman thanked him, but graciously declined, telling him she did not trust the care of her daughter to anyone with whom she was not already very well acquainted. My father told her that he absolutely understood, and after a while he bid them goodbye and went back to shopping.

Several more months went by and my father continued to hear crying through the walls. The tiny voice had become hoarse from the constant wails, and my father began to wonder if the child was not ill after all, but perhaps being abused in some way.

One night, the crying grew especially intense. It was full of anguish and he had deduced that the baby must have been in great pain, so he decided it was time to intervene. He placed a call to the local police and explained the situation, requesting that they also dispatch an ambulance to the woman’s apartment. They assured him they were on their way, but after hanging up, he decided to go to the apartment himself.

He walked to the Thornes’ apartment door and knocked several times. The young woman did not answer, and the crying continued. He knocked again, louder this time, but still she did not answer. Finally he tried the knob, and seeing that it was unlocked, he entered. A smell he described as foul and sick hit him in the face—the kind of smell that infests a place not touched by sunlight for months on end. He could smell body odor and rotting garbage. He retched almost immediately.

He followed the crying to a back bedroom, which was large, and most assuredly the master bedroom. He tried flipping the light switch on the wall, but was greeted with an empty click—the lights did not come on.

“Ms. Thorne?” he called into the darkness. “It’s Dr. Jesper from next door.”

The crying in the room continued, but the young woman did not answer him.

“Mrs. Thorne?” he called again. He heard rustling on the bed in front of him. He took one step closer and barely in the darkness he could see the baby. She lay on the bed, blankets draped across her small body. He recognized the pink knit hat that he had seen the infant wearing months earlier. As he crept closer, the crying continued. Finally he reached the baby and picked her up. He brought her out into the hall to examine her under the light.

It was only after he noticed that the baby’s crying seemed to stay behind in the bedroom when he realized he was not holding a baby at all, but rather a child’s doll. Its glassy eyes stared up at him, and in shock, he dropped it on the floor.

“No!” screamed a voice behind him. The young woman hurtled out of the darkness and pushed him aside. He fell back against the wall as the young woman scooped up the doll in her arms and cradled it. “She won’t eat!” she cried. “No matter what I do, she won’t eat!” She fussed with the baby doll for a moment, shoving a bottle of yellow, sour milk into its plastic mouth. She then turned and looked at my father. She opened her mouth wide. And the cries he had been hearing since moving in – cries eerily similar to that of a baby – assaulted the apartment.

On the wall behind the young woman was a photo of a baby—the kind taken at hospitals immediately following arrivals of newborns.

“Baby Jessica” was inscribed on the photo.

And on a small shelf below the photo sat a tiny, golden urn.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Challenge Accepted

Thanks to Mynx over at Lizard Happy, I am now joined up to the A to Z Challenge which is taking place in April. I decided to join as I missed out on last years BEDA Challenge and it does sound like an interesting concept to try.

It will also be interesting to see if I can come up with 26 posts following the A to Z theme! If you want to join too then head on over and sign up


I can't wait to get started!

SHITTY FLICKS: THE RAVEN

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

 
T h e R a v e n
By Edgar Allan Poe,
by way of Ulli Lommel

Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered weak and weary,
I, not thinking, brought back
The Raven from the movie store.
While I watched, I wished for napping,
to save me from this horrid crapping,
As Ulli Lommel's vicious trapping
made me feel like his dirty whore.
"Tis god awful," I muttered, "this movie I abhor-
I wish I had rented something more."
-----
Ah, distinctly I remember,
this would have offended famous Edgar,
as he clawed the lid of his coffin,
deep below the graveyard floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;
nothing's brought me greater sorrow,
had I just been somewhat stronger,
I'd've thrown this out the door...
Perhaps shook it off and ascended to the store,
but I stayed for Ulli's hellish tour.
-----
What this movie was about, I can't be certain,
It filled me with boredom-
a boredom I'd never felt before.
An hour's time, the cast sat eating--
and only talking, ain't that cheating?
With nary a reference to Edgar Poe,
what was this movie made for?
If not to honor a genius,
why suffer through this chore?
This it is, and nothing more.
-----
"Damn this movie's scent of farting!
Damn it all!" I shrieked upstarting-
"This movie doth much offend me,
I wish to hear me snore!
Does Ulli think my brain is broken,
perhaps a boob who is soft-spoken,
As to not see in this 1800's sequence
a very modern bedroom door?"
I pressed fast forward; the movie soared,
thought of watching; held it more.
Qouth the Raven – "I'm a bore."
-----
And The Raven, so unfitting,
please leave sitting, PLEASE leave sitting,
It can't bore you if it stays unseen,
sitting in the movie store.
Late at night, it haunts my dreaming,
I even sometimes wake up screaming,
And shake away haunts of Ulli's movie,
filled with nothing but corny gore.
Nightly I pray o'er us all,
my knees tucked 'neath me on the floor,
I pray to God that no luckless soul ever lift
The Raven from the movie store.
Quoth the Raven – 'I'm a snore.'
 
Tim Burton was glad he was able to bond with Jack Nicholson,
even if it was over their retarded 80s punk hair.