Many of you have seen my felt Cthulhu on the bookshelf in my living room. Tim Emrick made it along with all the other characters in my “Where the Great Old Ones Are” drawing. He’s put up the last two on ebay- Chaugner Faugn http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5513207614 and Ithaqua http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5513207006
Meanwhile, not far away: The Cobalt is closing.
I played tennis for over two hours today. And my shoes are falling apart. And I’m still working on The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I’m not going swimming tonight. I need to work work work.
scary
Function: adjective
Definition: frightening
Synonyms: alarming, bloodcurdling, chilling, creepy, hair-raising, hairy, horrendous, horrifying, intimidating, shocking, spine-chilling, spooky, terrifying, unnerving
Let’s agree on some ground terms as there are different types of horror films. I’ve split into four categories the techniques (tactics, if you prefer) commonly used in, and often defining, horror films.
The Gross-Factor: they pull out all the intestines and eye slashing stops; most zombie films I’ve seen rely on the gross-factor to get by.
The Creep-Factor: Ringu, Jacob’s Ladder and even Donnie Darko are great examples.
The Suspense Factor: this is my favourite – think of the part in Alien when Dallas was crawling through the ducts with a flame-thrower. Terminator, Jaws & The Shining had lots of it.
The “BOO!” factor: this is the one where your senses are assaulted by sudden flashes of visuals and audio – it’s all I remember about Event Horizon and it’s the cheapest kind of horror.
Now let’s look at a few really good horror films.
Alien. This came out when I was 9. I don’t remember when I saw it. Very little gross-factor, as far as I’m concerned. There’s the chest bursting scene and apart from a few short scenes of blood, that’s it. They’re all well done and I wouldn’t say they’re gratuitous. Oh, I guess the scene where Ash goes nuts is kind of gross, but still, I’m sticking with my low GF rating.
The Ring. High on the Creepy Factor. Disturbing and unsettling. I don’t remember any GF but there was definitely some Suspense Factor. If I recall correctly the BOO Factor was minimal to nonexistent.
King Kong (’76). I saw this when I was quite young, and it had an impact on me. Fighting with that snake had some GF but to me the most horrifying will always be the part when Kong was spinning that log to make the people fall down into the chasm. That was probably a bit too intense for me at my tender young age, so that’s stuck with me.
The Shining. Lots of creepiness, lots of suspense. No Gross-Factor to speak of. A real class-act.
John Carpenter’s The Thing. There was a fair amount of Gross-Factor in this – but it was divided between the blood ‘n’ gore kind of gross and the horrific-looking-slimy-shapechanging-alien kind of gross. Mostly it was suspense, with a touch of creepiness and a tiny smidgeon of BOO-factor at the end.
The Blair Witch Project. No Gore-Factor, no BOO-Factor. All SF and CF. I saw this in the theater and it actually had me shivering, but that could have been because the air-conditioning was up way too high. Also it played upon my fears of being in the woods at night (which comes down to bears, actually).
The Exorcist. Demon vomit definitely qualifies as gross, but I would say the main technique here is the Creepy-Factor.
Yvonne asked me if there were any movies that scared me. Well, if we’re talking about jumping in your seat because the scene went from quiet and serene to violently loud, then yes, Punch Drunk Love scared me when the semi came out of nowhere.
However, if you’re talking about a movie that leaves you with nightmares and noctiphobia, then the only movie that’s truly given me the heebie-jeebies in my adult life would have to be The Blair Witch Project. But they have yet to make a movie that is so scary that I wouldn’t watch it alone.
The fireworks were good (imagine a big screensaver in the sky) except for alllllll the people (and by extension their honking cars) and the screaming kid(s) and the sand. The last of which I wouldn’t have minded except I wore my second best pair of shoes which I’ve only worn twice before. Nobody told me the beach would be so sandy! I hadn’t seen any of the fireworks this year – I was saving up for the finale. There was a BBQ at Ursula’s before that with Andrea & Brian, Janet & Brian, Yvonne, Satomi, Marlo, Laura, Heidi, Heather, Allison & Caleb and afterwards we played Mario Party 3 in which I got 5 Millenium Stars. Ursy had 2 and Marlo had 1. I feel justified in saying “now that was an ass-kicking.” The moon looked like an orange wedge without the orange.
Oh yes, I almost forgot, I ate a quarter cup of mustard straight as part of a bet. They wouldn’t give me $100 to eat the entire jar though. And we all learned an important lesson about peer pressure.
And Yvonne gave me a hair cut. I enjoy being the head that first-time haircutters experiment upon.
Last night I started watching The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Night before I watched Alien Nation (6/10). Next it will be Gosford Park. I’m making 3 tapes of Clone High for Janet.
In September I’m going to a family reunion. I guess that could be the reason as to why I’m asking my mom to try to find me email addresses for all of my cousins. Otherwise it would be a pretty random thing to do. Maybe you come to a time in your life when you say “hey – I’m 34, I wonder what my cousins are up to?” I haven’t spoken to any of them for years. I haven’t seen them for years. As most of you know, I’m not really that close to my family. I don’t have any family in town and I never have since I’ve been in Vancouver, though my cousin April is apparently moving here in September to go to university. So, I thought it might be interesting to email them all and say “hey, I’m alive – I have a blog. What’s up with you?”
So we’ll see how that goes! Maybe they’ll have some fun epiphanies to share. I’m kind of excited.
And by that I mean…a blast to your berries?
Strawberries are mean. Because you’ll spend five minutes going through all the baskets to find the best “package” and then you’ll spend your three or four bucks, and then you’ll get home and enjoy them until you get to the very last one, which is – despite all appearances – mouldy and makes you run gagging towards the sink or garbage and spoils the whole experience. Mean old strawberries.
Tonight we played D&D and I was thoroughly amused. I think it’s safe to say that it brought out the best character roleplaying I’ve seen from the group. There were a lot of tense moments, and a lot of comical moments. In the end, they finished their current quest – so now it’s on the to next one!
In this crazy thing we call life, some days will go by where you don’t get 239 used video tapes from Karen.
Other days go by where you do get 239 used video tapes from Karen. Today was one of those days.
186 t-120’s
16 T-14o’s & 160’s and other longer tapes
37 shorter tapes (22-60 minutes in SP)
Let the request for dubbing commence. http://cartoontrade.cjb.net
I’m doing some more writing for the ESL book/cd company that I’ve done writing and voice work before. This time, the assignment is to write a bunch of stories rather than dialogues. Each story is about nurses – I guess the book is for ESL students who want to become nurses – and each one has to be about a specific subject, to whit:
Pediatrics
General medicine
General surgery
Cardiology
Dental & orthodontic
Dermatology
Geriatrics
Ear-nose-throat
Urology
Orthopedics
Obstetrics
Gynecology
Ophthalmology
Allergy
Plastic surgery
Infectious Deceases
Metabolism
Health Check-up (Radiology & clinical laboratory)
Occupational diseases
Geriatrics
Some I’ll write from the perspective of the nurse, some I’ll write from the perspective of the patient. Some first person, some third, etc. So hey – if you want to help me, and I’d appreciate it, if you have any interesting anecdotes about an encounter in any of these subject, I would love to hear it. Maybe I’ll use it if you don’t mind. I would change the names to protect the indolent (unless you didn’t want me to!). And better yet – if you know any nurses, I’d love it if you passed along my email (or point them to this blog entry) so I could ask them some questions/get their input. I don’t want to break any doctor-patient confidentiality, I just want to write some interesting little true-to-life stories.
Tonight I went swimming at a pool near Marlo’s house – with Marlo. It was a new experience for both of us. It’s $4.40 between 7 and 9. Adult swim in Coquitlam was $2 but it cost me $2 to get out there so it’s only forty cents more. Trouble was it was pretty crowded – and at 8pm we got kicked out of our side pool to make room for the lousy aquafitters. The instructor’s voice was incredibly shrill and when Marlo and I were discussing the idea of signing up to audit the course (for shits and giggles) I thought that would be the biggest hurdle. It was fun to watch her dancing around like an idiot though. We kept bumping into and kicking other people, it was so crowded. Once my hand came up out of the water and hit the hand of a girl in the other lane coming from the opposite direction. I thought it was romantic, but Marlo compared it more to a high-five. There was a whirlpool room but it was closed off with a sign that read – DANGER – CLOSED FOR SUPERCHLORINATION.
Afterwards we went to get something to eat at a sushi place on main and for 4 bucks I had the yummiest sushi I’ve ever had. It was yam with a bit of cream cheese on top and the whole 8 pieces were covered in crispy potatoe shavings – like a bird’s nest. With the wasabi I could hardly taste the seaweed. Cheap and delicious. Then I biked home – and here I am! I have another story to tell you but it will have to wait until Chris takes a digital pic.
Like they say in Fahrenheit 9/11 – you can get your country to go along with almost anything as long as you keep them in constant fear. The US raised its terror alert level and said that Al Qaeda might be planning to attack financial institutions in New York, Washington, and Newark, New Jersey. The 9/11 commission runs out of funds next month and is seeking private donations so that it can continue its work. A government audit found that Halliburton lost about one third of the property it was given to manage in Iraq; 6,975 out of 20,531 items were missing. The lost government property was worth $18.6 million. Too bad there weren’t any other choices. Too bad there was no bidding process for the contracts. The Bush Administration issued a new rule that will permit the EPA to approve pesticides without finding out from wildlife agencies whether the chemicals will harm plants and animals protected by the Endangered Species Act.
