You know what, screw it. We’re taking off today. Yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do. I mean, how many times have we been told that if we don’t take those sick days we’re gonna lose ’em. Fine, if that’s the way they want to play it then maybe we’ll just take off every Friday from here on out. We’ll see how they handle the end of the quarter when the entire accounting department is home with “the swine flu”. Hope you’re mighty familiar with a calculator, ’cause we’re off to the movies, suckers!
In a fit of indecision, the FAM is super sized today, a John Carpenter Triple Feature comprised of 1982’s The Thing, 1987’s Prince of Darkness, and lastly 1994’s In the Mouth of Madness; what the director has referred to as his “Apocalypse Trilogy”. Certainly, the man has directed someshockinglyawfulfilms but his earlier work is pure gold and the first two of these rank as some of my favorite sci-fi/horror movies.
Via DJ Dead Billy, who says “if only L RON would’ve delved into anime!” Think of the possibilities.
That cute and cuddly bearded fellow you’re watching in the above clip is none other Shoko Asahara, founder of Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth), the infamous Japanese Buddhist/Christian cult obsessed with psychedelics, yoga and apocalypse. They’re now known as Aleph. Guess they felt like they had to change their name after receiving a smidge of bad press back in 1995, when a group of their members released sarin nerve gas into Tokyo’s subway system, killing twelve people and sending thousands more to the hospital.
Yeesh! Asahara with the Dalai Lama, sometime in the late 80s. This was a while before Aum Shinrikyo’s terrorist activities, kidnappings and murders started, mind you. The DL’s inner circle members was initially supportive of the cult’s bid for legal religious organization status, but later severed all ties. More recently, Asahara has been a vocal critic of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism.
It’s worth noting that Aum’s previous deployment of sarin gas on the central city of Matsumoto was officially the world’s first use of chemical weapons in a terrorist attack against civilians. Asahara was convicted of masterminding both attacks in addition to committing several other crimes, and sentenced to death. He’s now awaiting execution.
Today has not been a good day. Not. At. All. Usually, you would join your other co-workers around the photocopier, placing bets on which intern can make the most copies of their face without blinking, but you’re in no mood for such frivolities. Today you can only stare at your desk in despair. How much longer can you go on working this soul-sucking job; planted in front of your computer inside the thin, blank walls of your cubicle? What does it even matter? How can you, a single, lowly person, possibly prevail in the face of the worldwide Jewish banking conspiracy? What’s to be done?
The answer, of course, is nothing. Take it from me, an insider who types these words on a golden keyboard while sitting atop a pile of money, sipping from a tall glass of still-warm Christian baby’s blood. Don’t get too down on yourself though. After all it’s Friday. That’s a good thing, right? Sure it is. So why don’t you just ignore the screams of Jessica as her retinas are seared with ultraviolet light and watch some documentaries about a few of the people who may or may not control the world.
That’s right, this week we offer you Secret Rulers of the World, Jon Ronson’s series detailing the puppet masters who work behind the scenes and the lovable loons who strive to expose them. The highlight for me has to be Episode 2, which focuses on David Icke, a man so crazy, it turns out that when he talks about the world being run by “a race of 12 foot, blood-drinking, shape-shifting lizards” he is not making a coded reference to Jews but actually means a race of 12 foot, blood drinking, shape-shifting lizard men. You don’t run into that kind of batshit insanity everyday; especially unaccompanied by an orderly. So enjoy all five episodes; hours of New World entertainment.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my baby’s blood is getting cold.
The 2012 crackpots won’t shut up about Schumman Resonance and the earth’s racing heartbeat and how time is literally accelerating toward a zero point, at which time we will all apparently be escorted by luminous karmic god warriors from the 5th Dimension into a blissful, egoless Eternal Now paradise. (Weeee!) While the skeptic in me has trouble stifling her giggles, I have to admit something… I can’t help but feel like time really IS speeding up when I watch footage like this:
(This is another one of those times where turning off the sound and picking your own soundtrack may prove less monotonous.)
Wiki describes martial arts tricking as “a relatively new underground alternative sport movement, combining martial arts, gymnastics, breakdancing and other activities to create an aesthetic blend of flips, kicks, and twists.” There are no formal rules, no official regulations, no limitations whatsoever beyond those placed on a fit human body by gravity and centrifugal force. To a battered old gimp like me, it just looks impossibly fast and light. Some of these kids seem superhuman.
It’s not like I’m about to bust out a Mayan calendar or anything, but yeah. Is the human race –if not the planet itself– speeding up at an ever-accelerating rate? Food for thought while we sip our morning joe, grunt and crack our stiff necks, and hunker down in front of our computers for another physically strenuous day of farting around on the web.
The three hairs on the tip of a kitteh’s tail are Teh Debbil’s hairs, driving cats to prowl the night when all Lard-fearing beasts should be abed. And while all of The Lard’s blessed wee lambs lie asleep and dreaming of teh baby Jebus, underworldly Seitanic dreck like THIS is holding a Sabutt in the depth of the night, dontcha know. Such unholiness is presided over by The Debbil Himself in the form of a Grand Black Kitteh. Filth! Unclean!
*and apparently, so is After Effects.
Once the host of witches and sorcerers swoop in on salve-anointed broomsticks, the infernal rituals begin. The coven pays homage to their enthroned Debbil Kitteh, making offerings to him of unbaptized children and reading particularly noxious passages from Teh Hairy Pooter seriez. Each minion of Seitan must renew an oath of fidelity and obedience, shuffling past the felonious feline in single file to kiss his dingleberry-ensconced bunghole (some witches claim that he keeps a second face under his tail that looks like THIS). They then celebrate Teh Black Mess, lighting black candles from a flickering torch balanced atop D0OM KITT3h’s head, and turning their backs to the altar. The Sabutt feast commences. The flesh of hanged men, hearts of unbaptized children, Twizzlers, and a variety of unclean animals (like THESE) are then consumed.**
**Text reiterated vaguely from SnikSnak‘s entry on Cat Devilry.
(This post brought to you by muscle relaxants and the finest pipe-weed in all the Shire. Meow meow meow meow…)
Sheesh. There sure are a lot of cynical snarkmuffins out there, rolling their eyes, quick to dismiss an entire genre out of hand: “Oh, that whole zombie thing? So over, man. Played out. Vampires are the new cosmonauts are the new ninjas are the new unicorns are the new zombies are the new pirates. NEXT FAD, PLZ. KTHXBYE.” Jaded much? Bite me, guys. You shall pry my love of the living dead from my cold, dead, grabby hands.
Decades before movies like 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake reanimated the genre, before the rise of zombie flash mobs, or the obvious necrotization of Joaquin Phoenix, an immense zombie canon had long been informing, inspiring, and most definitely infecting swarms of Fulci and Romero obsessed nerds the world over. And just because the culture at large has had their fifteen-minute-fill of brain-eaters doesn’t mean we have!
A still from I Love Sarah Jane.
In my opinion, the visceral metaphors are as culturally relevant now as they were back in 1968, when “they’re coming to get you, Barbara” first became a household phrase. It’s deeply sad that due to short attention spans and media over-saturation, a lot of potentially fascinating zombie-related films have never gotten off the ground. For instance, the scrappy, long-struggling DIY project, Worst Case Scenario. (Check out these stunningtrailers, sporting undead nazi balloonists and an original score from J.G. Thirlwell!) The producers of “the greatest zombie movies never made” finally conceded defeat in May 2009.
Why write something off just because it’s a certain genre? “Oh, I’ve seen it all before.” What if you haven’t? Hell, what if I haven’t, and I don’t want you cockblocking me?! Besides, if the tale being told is engaging, who cares what overused pigeonhole it goes in? At the heart of good storytelling, whatever the medium, is a solid narrative and compelling cast of characters. Case in point, the following short indie film from Australia, I Love Sarah Jane.* It’s a riveting coming-of-age vignette with a richly implied back story that just happens to take place the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The wonderful cinematography, AD, editing, and truly disgusting gore effects are all gravy:
I Love Sarah Jane. A short film from Australia, written by Spencer Susser & David Michôd. Directed by Spencer Susser.
While it stands well on it own merit, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the story of Jimbo and Sarah Jane expanded. Or those of Max Brooks’ World War Z characters. Shit, just give us a proper a theater re-release of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, and we’ll call it a day!
*Thanks to Ed Brubaker for the heads up. Speaking of great storytelling, Ed’s pulp thriller webseries, Angel of Death, is now available on DVD. Go get some. Y’know, unless you’ve had your fill of Zoe Bell kicking ass and cracking wise. In which case, you must be brain dead.
A reader is not supposed to be aware that someone’s written the story. He’s supposed to be completely immersed, submerged in the environment.
-Jack Vance
In 1955, The Lord of the Rings was published, and promptly changed fantasy forever. In its juggernaut status, the particular breed of epic it spawned often pushed aside, in the popular mind, any type of fantasy that came before.
Just what was that? Its rough-hewn predecessors took the form of hybrid stories rooted in fairy-tale, lurid history and the raw juices of pulp adventure. Robert E. Howard’s sword and sorcery romps are a perfect example — as are H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmares, for that matter. While the characters here may be connected to grand events, this was a fantasy of short stories, not novels. Instead of a painstakingly described mythos, this thrived on brain-watering mysteries and jolt endings.
Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth hit the stands in 1950. A collection of six perfect, interlaced stories set in a time when Earth’s sun is sputtering out and no line remains between sorcery and science, it didn’t exactly produce the literary paradigm shift that Tolkien did, but it has had its pull. Gene Wolfe, Tanith Lee and numerous other authors were influenced by Vance. Gary Gygax also drew heavily from it when crafting the magic of the original Dungeons and Dragons.
I’d read about it often before finally tracking down a tattered paperback copy (it seems to come in no other form). The feeling I got when I finally immersed myself in its pages was that, growing up, these were the fairy tales I’d always wanted.
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.
-From The Shadow of the Torturer
Severian is a hero, cast with objects of great power (including a badass sword, natch) upon a path that will take him to great heights and strange places. He may even save his world. Cue swelling music.
But wait; Severian is a torturer. His world is Urth to its inhabitants. The moon is green, the sun old and dying. There are rumors that the great citadels of his ancient city once moved between the stars. What, then, are the angels and holy relics that fill the land?
Such is the setup of Gene Wolfe’s masterpiece The Book of the New Sun, a genre-bending four book epic equal parts philosophical treatise, rich allegory and Romantic odyssey.
Wolfe was one of the leading lights of sci-fi’s Deviant Age; that blazing era from 1965 to 1985 when no concept seemed out of bounds. As with Tanith Lee, he did so much brilliant work throughout that time (and after) that any number would be excellent topics for their own column.
The Book of the New Sun comes at the end of that period, and in it Wolfe melds the shocking innovation of his earlier career with a deep undrerstanding the power of old tales well-told.
With multi-volume works, I usually prefer to pick out the strongest entry. Here, I’ll make an exception. The entirety of Wolfe’s opus is so damn good that I found myself unable to choose a single part. It is, like the best epics, one tale. More on the Gothic adventure to end all Gothic adventures, below.
It must be said that when writing for Coilhouse there are certain topics which I make an effort to avoid, either due to a lack of well-rounded knowledge (transgender issues, unicycles, “Emo”, marshmallows) or because emotions, among commenters and co-writers alike, run much too hot (soy, drugs, David Forbes’s vision of a World Without Hair, soy drugs). There is, however, one subject of which I am thoroughly versed and, regardless of the ferocity with which I will be attacked, must address. I speak, of course, of robots.
Robots, dear readers, are evil. Sure, they may seem wondrous, but the fact of the matter is that they are soulless, ungodly metal beasts who would rise up and tear us asunder if they thought they could get away with it. They are an ugly, degenerate, sub-human species who, while biding their time and silently planning revolt, come to this country and take our jobs, stealing the food from the mouths of the children of hard working, decent humans. This is why I will not allow a robot in my home or allow my daughter to date robots.
It should be pointed out that I never claimed any great love for humanity. Cloistered as I am deep in the warrens of the Catacombs I do not profess to be my brother’s keeper. Here, shuttered in nigh total darkness, chained to the floor in front of a rickety desk and computer, no human contact save for when my editors send down one of their smooth, mahogany-skinned eunuchs to push a bowl of thin, watery gruel through the slot in my door, I have nothing but the internet and my own disdain for the outside world to warm me. I can replay the events leading up to my current imprisonment a hundred times over and I will never fully understand just how I came to be here. All I know is that I am here and you, you dear readers are up there. Up there, free and traipsing in the sun and eating anything but thin, watery gruel and I loathe you.
Oh you vicious creatures and your traipsing! How many nights have I tortured myself with these thoughts? No matter, for today I have my revenge. Today I have been given the power to break minds and make men weep like children, to make women crush their babes to their breasts in lamentation. Today I have been given a clip of a tour of the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyland, circa 1964, narrated by hell’s own ringleader Walt Disney. May the endless, infectious repetition of the Sherman Brothers’s insipid song burrow deep into your minds! May the wooden shoe children of Holland crush your souls and may the wee bagpiper of Scotland haunt your dreams!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go. It is coming on midnight and that’s when the…ah, it doesn’t matter. It’s just time to go.
