Cuniculus Terribilis

In the tradition of our good friend Forky Fourchette over on the 42nd floor, I have collected a series of unsettling photos involving horrible bunnies in honor of Pagan Fertility Day...I mean Easter. If your church decides to participate in an egg hunt or a festive dance round the maypole this weekend, think back on these images and cringe inside your new, brightly colored Easter clothes. For you know....

...he's watching, and he's worse than Santa.

Vote for your fave!

Oops...how'd that one get in there?

OK, so this last one isn't terrifying. But you have to admit that the idea of bunnies high on candy and behind the wheel (with nothing left to lose) is pretty scary.

O'erwhelmed & Unemployed

Sorry my blogs have been so sluggish lately, but I have so much work to do sometimes that I simply cannot breathe. I swim through mounds of tasks, menial and herculean, on a daily basis, and I have nearly drowned many times. One of the academic librarians at our great Eyrieville University told me that she dropped out of her PhD program due to chest pains resulting from extreme panic attacks. All around me graduate students are dropping like novice soldiers in an epic battle with bloodthirsty monsters, and I sometimes wonder how long my paltry shield will hold out against their ceaseless onslaught.

Also, I desperately need a job for the upcoming summer. The powers that be at Eyrieville U have slashed my department's budget once again, and there will be no classes for the Teaching Fellows this summer. I have sent out applications to the local community colleges, but few have responded, and those that have all tell me how impressive my credentials are before they inform me that yes, they have no bananas; they have no bananas today. So, blogensteins, you must help me choose my summer job. Here are some choices:

• Lame-ass Book Clerk at local Christian bookstore.
• Lame-ass Book Clerk at local used bookstore.
• Lame-ass Book Clerk at Our Lady of Barnes & Noble.
• Male prostitute (The wife might protest, depends on the money).
• Ninja assassin-for-hire.
• Domestic cat-trainer.
• Wandering minstrel.

Cast your vote for my pathetic employment! Or suggest another pathetic job not listed here! Woo! Overeducated unemployment is great!

Paddy Cake?

God Save Ireland!

Boycott the One-Legged Dancer

Are any of you folks out there fans of the ABC hit show "Dancing with the Stars"? Well, stop it. They've really sunk to new lows this season by tossing Paul McCartney's shrew of an ex-wife into the toe-tapping contestant pool. She's mean, vicious, and as you can see in the quote above, she "like[s] Mickey Mouse." Creepy.

Mills claims, among other things, that Sir Paul McCartney committed the following horrible acts during their marriage:

Physically attacked her several times, including an incident when he stabbed her with a wine bottle.
Forbade her to breastfeed her newborn child because he claimed her breasts belonged only to him.
Denied her an antique bedpan she wanted so she would not have to crawl to the bathroom each evening.
Forced her to crawl up the steps of his plane when her wheelchair would not fit.
Ate babies and washed them down with liquified puppy brains.

Of particular interest is the fact that none of Ms. Mills' outrageous claims have been substantiated in any way, and she is in the process of attempting to wrench more than £30 million from Macca with the help of Princess Diana's lawyer, Anthony Julius. You can read about the whole sordid affair here.

So when the new season airs in a couple of weeks, change your channels for Sir Paul. Or if you simply must watch, vote repeatedly against Mills and send her one-legged ass a-packin' the first week.

I Want to Tell You

I almost forgot this year, but thankfully the clock radio played three of his songs on three consecutive mornings this week. I won't bore you with the minutiae of his biography or try to indoctrinate you with his personal philosophy because George wouldn't have liked that very much. Instead, I will simply list some of my favorite facts about the quietest (and youngest) Beatle. He had a great sense of humor and loved laughing at himself most of all, so I hope he would have enjoyed this little post. Here's to you, George.

• He loved jelly babies.
• He played Monopoly like a fiend.
• He had a small cameo in Monty Python's film The Life of Brian.
• He was the first rock musician to host a benefit/charity concert (the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971).
• He played 26 musical instruments, including the ukulele and the glockenspiel.
• He was a vegetarian.
• He was only 26 years old when the Beatles officially split.
• Frank Sinatra called his song "Something" "the best love song of the last 50 years."
• His wife Patty Boyd left him in the early 70s for his good friend Eric Clapton, but the two musicians remained friends.
• His actual birthday is February 24th (11:50 p.m.), but he believed it was the 25th for most of his life.
• Michael Abram, the man who broke into G. H.'s home in 1999 and stabbed him many times, believed he was possessed by George and on a mission from God to kill him.
• He had an extensive collection of Mini Coopers.
• He wrote a song for the soundtrack of Porky's Revenge in 1984.
• He was a lifelong fan of rocker Carl Perkins and played at his funeral in 1998.

If you want to watch one of the best live concerts of all time and remember Georgey this February, I recommend that you rent/buy Concert for George, the memorial concert performed one year after his death. I don't think it's an overstatement to declare that it is indeed freakin' awesome.

They Were Totally Doing It Together

Yes, I thought that might capture your attention, you naughty blogfiends. Of course, what I mean is that they were totally writing kick-ass Elizabethan drama at about the same time. What did you think I meant?

For reals, though, my Shakespeare seminar for this semester is entitled "Shakespeare & Marlowe: Friends & Lovers." Thus far we haven't supposed anything untoward about the sexual (mis)adventures of the world's favorite bard and his openly homosexual (and atheist) contemporary Christopher Marlowe, but we do know that they were in London at the same time and shared some of the same hangouts (as brilliantly imagined in Stoppard's Shakespeare in Love). And according to the historical accounts, practically everyone was at least "bi-curious" in those filthy, poop-in-the-streets Renaissance days.

And after all, why is Antonio so sad at the beginning of The Merchant of Venice? Could it be because he cannot officially 'get it on' with his "bosom lover" Bassanio? And who is the mysterious Mr. W. H. of the sonnets? The world may never know.

So whaddya think, blogsters? Was Willy into showtunes and interior design? If not, what's with all the penis jokes and cross-dressing in the plays? If so, was he Chris Marlowe's "bosom lover"? Leave your comment, and the truth will "out"!

Oy! Revival!

I Sang For the Jews...Again!

Forget all those gloomy plays like I Never Sang For My Father, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, and Edith Stein!
Make way for the newest stage musical sensation ...
I Sang For the Jews...Again!

Join in the mishegas this fall with the long-awaited arrival of Goyem McSchmuck's newest revival of an outdated musical hit I Sang For the Jews . . . Again! It's sure to be a kosher Yiddishkayt simcha and a half! Boytchiks and meydeles alike will revel in the toe-tapping music provided by those state-famous klezmers ...

The Farshluginers!

That's right, fresh from their tour of the upper Midwest part of Iowa, these talented knakers are itchin' to tickle your music bone! And McSchmuck's extravaganza doesn't stop there! You'll kvel when you hear the vocal stylings of ...

The Platzers!

And don't worry; the story is good clean fun and appropriate for ganse mishpochah! A young Yiddish minstrel named Yavel must find his place in the harsh and domineering world of his elders, who want him to become a rabbi and marry Bookzel, the town librarian. But Yavel has other plans. He falls under the spell of Flavva, a wandering gypsy who steals his heart ... and his money! After a whirlwind romance, Yavel must choose to either follow his heart and bridge the cultural gap between his Hasidic village and the gypsy tribe through music or else abandon his newfound love to begin shul. And this moyshe kapoyer kvetches and shvitzes more than any mensch you know when it comes to shul! It's Romeo & Juliet meets Fiddler on the Roof with a bisl of kishef!

Cheer Yavel on as he goes up against the oppressive traditions of the Chutzpah Brotherhood and teaches them all how to be a little less farchadat. You'll be farklempt, you'll be frayleich, and maybe even a little tsetumult, but you'll get a kick out of their shtick!

So run, don't walk to pick up your tickets now! This show is one tsimmes that gets every melamed's hekhsher!

(For a glossary of Yiddish terms used in this playbill, visit www.koshernosh.com/dictiona.htm)

One Birthday to Rule Them All...

115 years ago today, little John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in the wilds of Bloemfontein, South Africa, to Arthur and Mabel Tolkien. When he was still an infant, he was bitten by a tarantula (probably the prototype for Shelob) and would have died had not a quick-thinking servant sucked out the poison immediately. So I suppose we should take time to thank Tolkien's babyhood nurse for her part in keeping little Ronnie alive.

Due to venomous snakes, mischievous monkeys, the Boer War, and various rampant South African diseases, J. R. R.'s mother wisely chose to move little Ronald (as he was called by his friends and family) and his brother Hilary to Birmingham, England. Not long after they arrived, Tolkien's father fell ill with rheumatic fever back in South Africa; he later suffered a hemorrhage and died. Tolkien's mother died of diabetes when he was twelve (after homeschooling both her sons and introducing the all-important fairy stories of Andrew Lang and George MacDonald to her son Ronald), and he and his brother were sent by Mabel's priest, Father Morgan, to live with their Aunt Beatrice at Stirling Road. Tolkien loved his studies at King Edward's School, particularly Old and Middle English, and thus began his lifelong love affair with language.

At sixteen, after he and his brother had been moved yet again by Father Morgan, this time to the home of Mrs. Faulkner in Duchess Road, Tolkien fell hopelessly in love with Edith Bratt, a nineteen-year-old seamstress who also lodged in Mrs. Faulkner's home. Tolkien wanted to marry her after just a few dates, but the Catholic Church mandated that a young man had to be 21 to propose in those days, so Ronald had to wait. The very day that Tolkien turned 21, he ran to Edith and proposed; though Edith was engaged to another young man at the time, she broke off that engagement to become betrothed to J. R. R. Good choice, Edith.

In 1911, the young Tolkien entered Oxford along with several of his old school chums from King Edward's, including Christopher Wiseman and Robert Q. Gilson. There they continued the small, exclusive club known as the T. C. B. S. (formerly the Tea Club and the Barrovian Society) that they had begun as librarians at King Edward's. Tolkien did well at Oxford, and he began to branch out into new languages like Old Norse, German, and Finnish, from which he took a good deal to create Quenya, the language of the high elves of Middle Earth. Tolkien stayed on at Oxford after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 in order to graduate, but soon after graduation, he was commissioned as an officer in the 13th Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. While on leave from his duties with the 13th, Tolkien and Edith Bratt were married on March 22, 1916. Ronald and Edith Tolkien would have four children: John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla.

After fighting on the front line in France, including the disastrous Battle of the Somme, Tolkien eventually succumbed to post-traumatic shock syndrome and trench fever and was sent home. Several of his close friends from the T. C. B. S. died in the war, and Tolkien was powerfully affected by it for the rest of his life. After his service in the army, Tolkien began teaching at the University of Leeds and then at Oxford as Professor of Anglo-Saxon in 1925. Over six years later, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Warren Lewis (C. S.'s elder brother), Charles Williams, and others began meeting on Tuesdays in a small Oxford pub called the Eagle and Child (known affectionately by its patrons as 'the Bird and Baby'), and so began the group known today as the Inklings. This small group was responsible for a renewed interest in Christianity in Oxford, despite the growing atheism and agnosticism that grew out of the despair and disillusionment following WWI.

But in 1930, while grading a stack of students' essays (I'm still waiting for this type of inspiration to happen to me...), Tolkien turned over one of the pages and scribbled randomly, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Thus began what would eventually be named the most influential work of literature of the 20th century. The Hobbit was first published in 1937 and received a good deal of critical and public success, but the main event wasn't to come until almost 20 years later, when Tolkien finally found a publisher willing to take on his enormous draft of The Lord of the Rings in 1954. The initial print of the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, sold out in less than 2 months.


The tremendous success of Tolkien's masterwork made him an almost instant literary celebrity, something almost unheard of in the mid-20th century, and he had some trouble adjusting to public scrutiny. Despite his vast financial success, he continued to live his life in the simple way to which he was accustomed. Sadly, his wife Edith died in 1971, and Tolkien only lived for two more years, passing into the west himself on September 2, 1973 from an infection in his digestive tract.

One of my favorite quotes about Tolkien is a simple statement by Diane Duane: "Because of Tolkien, the universe will forever genuinely contain magic." I guess it is his legacy that thousands of young and old readers are still inspired by the power of this simple man's imagination and probably will be for centuries to come. I often tell my wife, friends, and students that Tolkien will one day be regaled by scholars in much the same way that Shakespeare is today. True, as many Tolkien scholars and biographers point out, Tolkien is still not studied with any seriousness in higher academic curriculums, and most professors in the humanities would laugh at the idea of anyone specializing in Tolkien (whereas specializing in Franz Kafka or James Joyce is a perfectly legitimate choice?), but someday, probably long after I'm dead, Tolkien's epic contribution to literature will at long last be recognized by those who claim to be literary scholars. After all, Shakespeare was considered populist tripe in his day, too.


Works Consulted

Baldwin, Stanley P. J. R. R. Tolkien: His Life and Works. Library of Great Authors Ser. New York: Spark, 2003.

Carpenter, Humphrey. J. R. R. Tolkien: The Authorized Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

For Auld Lang Syne...

Well, blog-pals, 2006 has passed. On the plus side, Saddam is dead. On the other hand, so are Steve Irwin, James Brown, Peter Boyle, Joseph Barbera, Wilson Pickett, Don Knotts, Billy Preston, Robert Altman, and President Gerald Ford.

Brangelina adopted the entire nation of Haiti and most of Ethiopia in the bargain. Madonna tried to follow suit, but she's not as cute, so Oprah had to help her out.

At long last, JonBenet Ramsey's killer was identified, but he turned out to just be a creepy guy who knew her. Kenneth Lay was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy in the Enron scandal, but he died before he could serve one day in jail.

Megachurch pastors are gaining more media visibility for Christianity, but unfortunately some of them are secretly hiring gay prostitutes and then lying about it. The Democrats gained control of Congress, so at least there is some hope for W. Bush Hill, but unfortunately Hillary is still planning on running for President, so that hope is thin.

YouTube is the new MySpace, and Google is the new AT&T. The Russian government is still poisoning people who disagree with them. Paul McCartney's worthless wife has finally been shown the door, but she's managed to drag his name through the mud in the process.

And we're still at war with Iraq.

Overall, 2006 has been lukewarmy or purgatory-ish at best: not too bad, not too good. There was no unbelievably horrific natural disaster or national tragedy involving terrorism, but neither was there peace on earth and good will toward men. Maybe it's too much to ask for '07 to be an improvement over this year, but then again, hope springs eternal from the bottom of Pandora's famous box, so let's (perhaps naïvely) assume the mantle of cautious optimism as we look to the future. In the words of the brilliant Lord Tennyson...

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Huzzah, Al.

Yule Never Believe This...

We've all come across the word, sometimes on Christmas cards, sometimes as part of the title of a lame children's Christmas music CD (i.e. "Cool Yule"), sometimes in the lyrics of those most sacred Christmas carols themselves:

"Yuletide carols being sung by a choir, and folks dressed up like Eskimos..."

"Don we now our gay apparel (Fa-La-La-La-La-La-La-La-La); Troll the ancient Yuletide carol..."

"Bring us out a table and spread it with a cloth; bring us out a cheese and of your Yuletide loaf..."

"Rudolph the Wiccan Reindeer had a very Yuletide nose..."

OK, so I may have slightly altered that last one, but the first three are real enough. Have you ever stopped to wonder what that funny little four-letter word that so conveniently rhymes with "cool" actually means? Where does it come from? Why do we still say it? Maybe we should ask this nice lady...

Madam, pray tell us what "Yule" or "Yuletide" is all about.

"Oh my, it's simply the most beautiful and magical of all the pagan celebrations; it's the festival of the Holy Winter Solstice!"

I'm sorry? Don't you mean the celebration of the birth of the Messiah? You know, the King of Israel?

"I don't know much Middle Eastern history, but Yuletide is the sacred time after the woolgathering and spinning where everyone must be given an item of clothing or risk being taken by the Yule Cat. Also, we slaughter a pig and dance around his burning carcass long into the night. Now if yule excuse me, I must attend to my brew...um, I mean...wassail."

What?! 'Yuletide' is some sort of crazy witches' party?! You dance around a burning pig and give each other woolen presents to ward off some evil cat? What about the "Yule Log"? Doesn't that have some sort of Christian symbolism behind it?

"Good Priestess, no! The Yule Log is an offering to the fertility gods and the only way to ensure that our houses are safe from lightning, hailstorms, and unfriendly magic. Now I really must ask you to go; you're going to wake my daemon...I mean...pet iguana."

Oh well, there you have it, folks. I guess everyone's a little bit pagan these days. Have a Happy Yule! May your cattle be fertile and your hearths be free of dark wizardry! But be productive and never lazy, lest you incur the wrath of...

THE YULE CAT!

The Birth of Our Ford and Savior...

For any of you out there who have read Huxley's Brave New World or practically anything by Karl Marx, this harmless little children's book should send shivers up your spine. It's for real, kiddos; I picked up a copy with speechless incredulity at Our Lady of Barnes & Noble a few days ago, flipping through its propaganda-laden pages unable to laugh or cry.

The premise of this capitalistic pamphlet involves Santa, the greatest of all symbols of American materialism and greed, teaching the merits of the assembly line method of production to Henry Ford, the greatest of all symbols of capitalism's soulless industrialization and dehumanization of the worker, to increase the elves' (the North Pole proletariat) rate of production, enabling them to make more toys even faster! How long until the facts of religion and of history are obliterated completely by harmless children's stories such as these? Who needs Christmas when American consumerism can forge its own legends and meanings for December 25?

Good God, people.

"Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't." - Mustapha Mond in Brave New World

Jingle All the Way...To Hell!

Hello, all my good little consum...er...children. It's your favorite Holiday pal, Santa Claus (TM)! I wanted to take a little time out of my VERY busy schedule to address some unfortunate sentiments that some of you naughtier boys and girls have been expressing this Season.

First off, let me congratulate those of you who have noticed that my first name is an anagram for the common moniker of the Prince of Darkness. Very clever. And yes, I also dress in solid red and appear most often in the form of an old man, and I could very possibly be hiding horns and cloven hooves under my hat and boots, respectively. But honestly, does anyone really care about all that? Sure, a few of you have pointed out the similarities, and a few of you have even tried to call attention to the fact that I was originally created to sell Coke (TM) to the kiddies, but even you who rail righteously against me will go out this December and worship me at my various altars: First Church of Wal-Mart, The Targetarian Temple, and Our Lady of Barnes & Noble.

So go ahead and criticize, if you wish, but remember where hypocrites and liars go. Everyone has the right to be checked off my list as "nice," provided that they do as I command and spend the good news this Holiday Sale's-on.

Secondly, a laughable few have written me letters asking for nonsensical things like "an end to war" or "a cure for AIDS" or "blessings on my family" this year. I think you may be a tad confused. Those things aren't really my department; I handle only what I can load in my sack and dump down your chimneys. World peace and good will toward men aren't very lucrative wares for me to peddle since they take time and cooperation and, yes, even self-sacrifice. Oooh, that word always gives me the willies!

Which brings me to my last point. You-Know-Who's name is being systematically removed from many end-of-year proceedings, and a small number of you have been whining about that of late. Well, I've got news for you; it's the 21st century, and you need to adapt and get with the times! Not everybody likes to be reminded of You-Know-Who's depressing life story while they're opening their gifts 'neath the Holiday Tree, and what's bad for business is bad for Santa (TM). So the C-word is hereby effectively banned (except in those places where its inclusion might sell more greeting cards, bumper stickers, and bookmarks). Please use the following Santa Claus (TM) approved terms when greeting one another or when referring to this December/January's festivities:

Acceptable Salutations:

• Happy Holidays!
• Winter's Greetings!
• Season's Greetings!
• Welcome to Best Buy, how may I help you?

Approved Titles for Seasonal Get-togethers:

• Winter Holiday Party
• Yuletide Jamboree
• End-of-Year Celebration
• 20-40% Off Sale

I think that covers it. So, from all of us at the North Pole, Happy Holidays! And remember, keep You-Know-Who's name to yourself this year; we'll all be much jollier for it!

Dead Week Poll

I need your help, blog-fam. You haven't been particularly vocal of late, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and try to solicit your involvement in a pointless poll.

I am showing a film to my freshmen writing classes next week, and I need some feedback as to which movie should make the screening. The options are posted above. Please vote this weekend! Yeah, right, who am I kidding; nobody reads this stupid page.

Butt Seriously, Folks...

I know that you think I doctored this image, but I promise you that I did no such thing. If you don't believe me, click here to learn more about this wonderful product. Just listen to these glowing testimonials (the names have been changed to protect the incontinent):

"My 6 yr.old son was really having a problem with having a really sore butt especially on the sides of his butt crack(should I say that?) nothing helped, he would cry couldn't sit, walk, lay it was a nightmare. I found your product on the internet and went out and purchased the butt paste. The next morning his behind was almost completely healed. Why did the butt paste work when the triple antibotic and the neosporin didn't. Thank-you I plan on keeping your product on hand at the house."

- Soreina Buttman

"When my son was about 3 months old he got a really bad diaper rash. the doctor had given us a Rx for some stuff,butt when i got to the pharmacy they did not have it. the guy working said here try this if it does not work i will give you your money back i am that certain it will work. So of course i got it and WOW!!! In two days my sons rash was gone. I love the butt paste. and will never use anything else ever agian and will always recomend the butt paste to everyone."

- Derry Airrari

Are you having trouble laughing this holiday sale's-on? How about your disillusioned friends and relatives? Slip some butt paste in their stocking and watch the hilarity ensue. It may not be the most thoughtful gift, but on the whole, I'd say that Boudreaux's Butt Paste just feels good.

Want to leave a Butt Paste testimonial? Click here!

Dead Man's Party

Are you throwing a Halloween party? Are you inviting scads of ghouls over to your crypt to make this Halloween a night to dismember? Are you just planning on sitting pathetically alone with a cat and a gallon of cookies n' cream? Well, do I have the movie list for you!

Here are some of my favorites, arranged categorically (special thanks to Wikipedia):

Vampires: Bram Stoker's Dracula (Gary Oldman's finest hour), Dracula (the original 1931 version with Bela Lugosi), The Lost Boys (campy, but low-budget eighties-tastic), From Dusk Till Dawn (Quentin Tarantino does the fanged undead in a cheap whorehouse; fun for all ages!), Nosferatu (silent but intensely creepy classic that features "real" vampyre Max Schreck; for more info but less creep, check out Willem Dafoe's Shadow of the Vampire), Fright Night (this one features Roddy McDowall as a washed up horror film actor, if you can imagine!).

Werewolves: Silver Bullet (based on a pleasantly brief graphic novel by some weird dude from Maine), The Wolf Man (watch Lon Chaney, Jr. transform into a beast without ever tearing his clothing!), An American Werewolf in London (as mentioned in a previous post, I first saw this gem when I was three; imagine the night terrors!), The Howling (contains the longest man-to-wolf transformation scene in cinematic history; seriously, you'll have time to take a bathroom break and make dinner before he's finished), Dog Soldiers (a bunch of obnoxious Scottish military guys get systematically devoured on the moors), Ginger Snaps (angst-ridden teenage hussies get wolfy on their boyfriends and family members).

Ghosts (those who know that they're dead and those who aren't so sure): The Sixth Sense (the scene on the spiral staircase made me wet myself), Poltergeist (a truly disturbing jaunt through corpse-filled suburbia; clowns, TV static, and old trees have never been the same), The Ring (if you watch it, you will die in seven days, and not because of your late fees at Blockbuster!), The Grudge (proves conclusively that nothing is more frightening than a Japanese contortionist who croaks like a frog), The Others (demonstrates the consequences of too much religious education and time spent indoors, as well as why you should never piss off Nicole Kidman), The Blair Witch Project (shaky, nausea-inducing camera shots aside, this movie made tent and sleeping bag sales drop across the country).

Monsters, Ghouls, Zombies, and Other Such Mess-cellany: Frankenstein (the original 1931 version with Boris Karloff), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (believe it or not, Robert DeNiro will make you cry, and Kenneth Branagh's painted-on abs will make you laugh), The Thing (though it is technically an alien, this hideous parasite makes the things Sigourney Weaver had to fight look like Teletubbies), Dead Alive/aka Braindead (forget The Lord of the Rings; this is the film that proves Peter Jackson's genius; prepare for lawnmowers and overbearing zombie mothers), The Evil Dead Series (let's face it, zombies really aren't very scary, but they are pretty damned funny), Child's Play (this film made my cousin lock all of her dolls in the closet each and every evening for the entire duration of her childhood).

Serial Killers and Other Crazy People: Misery (gave me my irrational fear of old-fashioned typewriters; thanks, Stephen King!), Psycho (the Hitchcock version, of course; rocking chairs and granny wigs will be spoiled for you forever), The Silence of the Lambs (it puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose...oooh, now that's going to be stuck in my head), Wolf Creek (this one really bothered me; it's not for the faint of heart or for those with plans to visit Australia in the near future), Se7en (despite its attempt to pass off the number 7 as the letter "V," this is an intellectual thriller that will keep on creepin' long after it's done), AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST......Halloween (something about the atmosphere of this film is unspeakably creepy; the flickering jack o'lanterns and the rustling fall leaves make Mike Myers somehow unbearably frightening; this film sums up everything wonderfully eerie about the month of October).

Please Do Not Read This Post!

Just in case anyone is in the neighborhood . . .

Want to See Something Really Scary?

"Designed to improve social interactions, especially for tens of thousands of people who suffer from a mild form of autism called Asberger's Syndrome, Finan's "Mood Phone'' would light up in a spectrum of color - from warm reds to cool blues - based on the verbal patterns of everyday speech received through the handset. Seen through the corner of the eye, the visual stimulus would help users interpret the mood and inflection communicated through the words and phrases they hear."

It's not enough that they already govern our schedules, driving habits, manners, news and information intake, and pretty much the whole of our external existences. Now they want inside our minds!

For the whole horrific story, click here.

And I Just Can't Wait Until Next Halloween...

Are you all as excited as I am? I don't know if it's because I will be experiencing my first Hallow's Eve as a homeowner or if it's simply because the weather is cooler up here next to Everycity and Ft. Valuecity, but whatever the reason, I'm frothing at the mouth for October 31st this year. I love Halloween. I hope that doesn't make anyone out there in blogland think I'm a pagan. I'm not. I just absolutely love this supernatural nod to the old beliefs in magic and mysterious creatures that has somehow survived the Enlightenment and its systematic demythologization of everything that can't be proved in a laboratory to exist in the modern era.

I love the fact that thousands of people still dress up as ghouls, monsters, zombies, vampires, werewolves, hobbits, and Power Rangers to ward off and confuse the evil spirits that are said to congregate on the last day of October (even if they don't know that this is why costumes were originally worn on Hallow's Eve). I love taking an evening walk around my neighborhood and seeing the orange glimmer of jack o'lanterns on people's front porches, their eerie grins adding just a touch of the unknown to my boring run-of-the-mill life in suburbia.

Who else loves Halloween out there? Is it still cool to like this holiday? I was raised a Methodist during a time when "Fall Festivals" were unheard of as a safe and wholesome alternative to that most evil practice known as "trick-or-treating." Far from discouraging Halloween frivolity, my father would dress up as Jason (complete with an actual meat clever or machete, mind you; none of that plastic Wal-Mart crap at our house) and hide in various closets around the house until he could leap out and add several more months to my tenure in therapy. My mother would wear a witch wig and long fingernails so she could sit on the front porch and cackle at everyone who loitered in our front lawn. These are the people who let me watch An American Werewolf in London when I was three. I come from odd stock...

Anyway, at the risk of sounding too much like a bumper sticker, blog if you love Halloween. And let me know what I should be this year; right now, it's a toss-up between George Harrison and Victor Frankenstein.