We accept you, one of us. Gobble! Gobble!

I have long considered myself a freak. Before you go saying, 'but you don't look like a freak,' consider this:

Freak is defined in the OED as 1. a monstrosity; an abnormally developed individual or thing. 2. an abnormal, irregular or bizarre occurrence. 3. a an unconventional person. b a person with a specified enthusiasm or interest. c a person who undergoes hallucinations; a drug addict. & 4. a caprice or vagary.

While it is arguable that I am not a physical monstrosity in an aesthetic sense (depends on your perspective), my brain most certainly is abnormally developed. I'm probably smarter than 98-99% of the world's population. I'm not bragging, it's a fact (and another arguable one at that if you are the type who is inclined to dismiss the validity of IQ tests, which I am & you should be, too). However, my freakish brain does make me seem 'unconventional' according to modern standards of normalcy (whatever THOSE are!) & as such, I am prone to vagaries (my profound enthusiasm for poetry, horror, & the uncanny, for instance) & bizarre vulgarities (naked ladies & balls!).

As for drugs, well, I have been known to ingest the occasional fortifying spirit & herbal remedy, but I haven't had any hallucinations that I know of since the last terrible fever I had. When I'm feverish, I hear voices & see the Devil! Or perhaps it was during my experimental Gravol phase in highschool...

...

Yeah.

...

Two other obsessions of mine are self-portraiture and sideshows. I <3 SIDESHOWS. I've never had the terrifying pleasure of attending a real, live freakshow, and sadly, never will, except maybe Coney Island. Most of what you see today (which is VERY little) is a gaffe. Real freaks just aren't PC.

So, I've decide to combine these two obsessions (self-portraiture & sideshows) for a spectacular display of the truly bizarre.

Step right up, folks. Come closer. Closer. What you are about to see will captivate you, frighten you, delight you & maybe ... even shock you. That's right folks, just what you've been waiting for. You have to see it to believe it. What we have here are the most beautiful, the most enchanting, the most terrifyingly lovely women you will ever set your eyes upon. Men have died just looking at them! I kid you not! Step right up. Step in and take a look. You won't be disappointed.

rosa violetta, the half-woman

serpentina. if you could bend like her, you'd never leave the house

susi, the swamp girl

lana, white cannibal queen

hirsute hilary, darwin's missing link

 And the pièce de résistance :

eeny, meeny, miney & moe: conjoined quadruplets!

...

Sorry, folks no naked ladies here; this show's family friendly. (You didn't think I was THAT kind of girl, did you?)

Bah, who am I kidding!

Some tasteful photos from back in the day when it was actually scandalous to be naked/nearly naked in a non-sexual way. Nudity for art's sake. Or for Art's sake...

pretty

sexy

...

Upon Julia's Clothes
Robert Herrick

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me !

...

Trepidation of the spheres

This past weekend was W.T.C.C. For the last seven years it has been held in Serbia during the last weekend of August. This year, the festival took place in the village Ozrem. According to the official website, people from "Norway, Finland, Republic of Serpska, Macedonia, Australia, Spain, Austria, Slovenia, the USA, Canada [&] Hungary have entered the competition."

This year's motto: "Something is cooking."

Besides the obvious cooking competition, there's camping, music, and plenty of opportunities to make new friends, all in the great Serbian outdoors. Sounds ballin', eh!

Well, boys, grab a hold of your nutsacks & don't let go.

W.T.C.C. is an acronym for World Testicle Cooking Championship. That's right. They cook TESTICLES.

shish keballs, anyone?

 

 

But don't worry. No one's planning on roasting your gonads. Human testicles are about the only kind of testicles that AREN'T served at the Ball Cup.

The events, which include a welcoming party, a concert featuring the Cooking With Balls Band, a juried competition, & in 2010, an attempt to achieve a world record for most testicle meat (1.5t from 16 different species) on one plate, are clean. Vulgarity, nudity, drinking competitions & Viagra are not permitted.

The rules of the festival are simple: over 65's, AA's & Viagra prohibited; the testing of the specialties' effects (aka aphrodisiac effects) is relegated to an assigned camp; no 'casual' visits to the 'balling' area; & my personal favourite, 'women are allowed everything.'

In addition (& you thought it couldn't get any worse), the entire jury is made up of women (doctor's of veterinary medicine, no less), there is a Ball Cup Camp, a purchasable t-shirt with the caption: 'You're lookin' in a wise man who visited www.ballcup.org'  & a COOKING WITH BALLS cookbook, written by the founder & organizer of the Ball Cup, Ljubomir R. Erović, who said, "The Scots have Scotch, the Swiss have cheese, and we Serbs have balls!"

Balls, indeed!

The website for the W.T.C.C. is pretty cool: http://www.ballcup.org/index.php You should check it out. If only so you know I am not making this up.

Perhaps the best/worst thing about the spirit of the competition is Ljubomir's altruistic dedication to finding an aphrodisiac that will 'conquer the world.' If only it was that easy...

Doesn't this pizza look delectable?

                
...

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away, 
And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."
                    
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys 
To tell the laity our love.
 
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
 
Dull sublunary lovers' love 
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit 
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is, 
Inter-assurèd of the mind, 
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
Though I must go, endure not yet 
A breach, but an expansion, 
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two; 
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit, 
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun. 

...

Ode to the giant disco ball in the sky

I went for a walk today.

It was good to be alone with my thoughts. One with Nature. In a far-off land where rivers flow backwards & the sky is upsidedown. Good thing I had my camera.

Come with me

to a land with mysterious underwater creatures

where the laws of physics do not apply

Come with me to a world of dreams.

let there be light

heaven & earth

and darkness...upon the face of the deep

It's all kind of portentous & biblical, isn't it?

You can imagine my fright!

...

I drowned my sorrows in the river today. Pray they don't come back.

toxic waste

...


Reason has Moons
Ralph Hodgson

Reason has moons, but moons not hers
Lie mirror'd on her sea,
Confounding her astronomers,
But oh, delighting me.

...

I had a compulsion to do it

I like serial killers almost as much as I like birthdays. So today is a two-for-one!

Ed Gein, possibly the most infamous serial killer who didn't really kill all that many people (he only actual claimed to have killed two women), was born today, 1906.

I swear he could've been my brother:

Except he was a supposed necrophiliac cannibal who liked to rob graves (including that of his mother), make pretty/fancy things like bowls, jewelery, masks, lampshades, chairs, bedposts, etc. out of body parts, murder women who looked like his mother, and dress up in a full bodysuit made of human skin. Ol' Eddy sure was obsessed with women! Especially dead ones. He also read anatomy texts & literature on the Nazi's, kept preserved vulvas in a box (just in case?!), & even babysat on occasion.

Thankfully, he and my brother have very little in common. 

Whether Ed actually did EVERYTHING he is purported to have done--he never admitted to necrophilia or cannibalism--or whether some of it is journalistic embellishment doesn't really matter. He was dedicated to his art.

Reminds me of someone else who was dedicated to his art:



...

In a Dark Time
Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

...

Just when you thought it was safe to be dead!

I was 11 when I first watched Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988). My best friend & I sat in her livingroom & ate popcorn & drank pop & watched it over & over & over & laughed & laughed & laughed & cried & cried & cried. We also hung out with the cows in her barn & later checked out the Hustler mags her Stepdad kept between his mattresses, but that's another story (& trust me it's NOT as perverted as you think).

Return of the Living Dead Part II wasn't my first zombie flick, but it was almost as memorable. The first was a little known Z-grade classic called The Children, about a group of kids who become zombified after the school bus they're riding on passes through a mysterious fog. I was 8 & watched it with my Dad. For some reason I thought the children ate the adults when they hugged them (they don't, they burn them) & it was because of this movie that I was terrified to go into the shed. There was a lot of junk in the shed & consequently a lot of hiding places for the children, you know!

But Return of the Living Dead Part II. THAT one made me laugh pretty much from beginning to end. Good-bad acting, cheesy dialogue, blood, guts & brains galore! It was the day my love affair with all things slashy & trashy truly began. I've seen better zombie movies since (much better in fact), but it was crucial to my psychological development. If it weren't for movies like this, I wouldn't be the mentally deranged person I am today! I also wouldn't have this:

That's right. Return of the Living Dead Part II Original Motion Picture Soundtrack on vinyl. Framed. Oh hell yes, baby, can you dig it!

Besides arousing in me a feeling of total nostalgic bliss, this album is important because a) it was released in 1988 around the same time as the movie, b) other than a small hole in the cover itself, it's in near mint condition, and c) due to rights issues or some other damned thing, the soundtrack for the DVD is not the same as the soundtrack for the VHS. This puppy's rare. Ca-ching!

Thanks, Tom D. (Told you no one else would buy it!)

...

And for your viewing pleasure:




 ...

dying is fine)but Death
e.e. cummings

dying is fine)but Death

?o
baby
i

wouldn't like

Death if Death
were
good:for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying
's miraculous
why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly
putting
it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly
scientific
& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee
god
almighty for dying
(forgive us,o life!the sin of Death

...

How like a corpse she looks in the dying of the light

There are times when I rage.

I rage against time, money, love, happiness, my child, the cat, the douche who almost ran me over with his monster truck, people who talk to me when I am clearly ON THE TELEPHONE, jujubes & jellybeans (ew!), gum on the bottom of my shoe, puppies & kittens, babies (yeah, I said it), world hunger, illiteracy, semi-literacy, and 'the machine.' I rage against bad grammar, bad manners, bad lovers, bad liars & bad livers. And I rage against the world, my life, my mind, and as Dylan Thomas wrote, 'against the dying of the light."

Sometimes I rage against nothing in particular. The most uncontrollable, irrational rage you can imagine. The kind of rage that makes me want to smash things and bite people's faces off. And laugh. And spit in their earholes. And vomit on them. And kick them in the back. And loose red ants upon them. And pluck out every one of the rotting hairs on their bodies one at a time. And ...

All because they cut me off with their grocery cart or squeezed the toothpaste tube from the top instead of the bottom.

The truth is I rage against everything. And most of the time it is in check. But there are those times my rage is as dark & red & cold & bright as 'the dying of the light.

Today was one of those times.

...


Thankfully, I began writing this just before the sun set.

And what a beautiful sunset it was! It helped lift my spirits tremendously.

Thank goodness it didn't literally take my breath away. Otherwise ...

I think I'll make a pretty corpse

 ...

You may already know this one.

Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

...

This is my letter to the world

Saw one of these at work today:

Thank goodness THIS isn't a local delicacy!

A coworker found it crawling up the side of the back door. He brought it inside to show us. I wish I'd had my camera.

But I touched it.

And it was awesome.

It was about the size of a breakfast sausage & its skin was wrinkled & soft as an apricot.

Ah.

...

What my silken friend will eventually become:

It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.

This website shows the transition of the Hyalophora cecropia silkmoth beautifully: http://www.wormspit.com/cecropia.htm

(I think the eggs look more like teeth.)

...

from Nature in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

VII

From cocoon forth a butterfly
As lady from her door
Emerged—a summer afternoon—
Repairing everywhere,

Without design, that I could trace, 
Except to stray abroad
On miscellaneous enterprise
The clovers understood.

...

The Tortoise and the Hare aka A Tale of Two Devils

*the events in this story are mostly true. the people, real(ish).

Speaking of uncanny coincidences. My brother came to visit me the other day. He's later than the proverbial hare! He called weeks ago to tell me he was coming. But since he was already at my back door, I had no choice but to let him in.

This is my brother:

Sibling Revelry

And in more recent times:

Kickin' it to the side

Josh likes beer, girls & a few other things I won't mention. I have dubbed him The Hillbilly Gangsta. If you knew him, you'd think the nickname was spot on. Josh is one of my favourite people, and not just because he is my only sibling. He's the epitome of laidback, what you would call a fun-lovin' guy.

When we were kids, he was my guinea pig. Whenever there was some daredevil stunt to be performed, Josh went first. If he was successful, my turn! If not, he usually found himself in the hospital & all the fun was spoiled. Don't get me wrong, I'm no sadist (quite the opposite actually!), I'm just enterprising & clever enough to hide the evidence of my masochism. Which is why he's had far more scrapes, bruises, broken bones & stones in his face than I! (If you believe in karma, it will please you to note that I am diabetic & spend far more time than I would like in hospitals & waiting rooms).

Three other reasons I love my brother: he has J-O-S-H tatooed across his knuckles, he says "I'm just Josh'n ya" all the time (which I find pathetic & hilarious at the same time) & his laugh is infectious. Try not laughing around him. I dare you.

Anyway, back to the story.

Josh brought two friends with him when he visited. We listened to some records, drank some beer & laughed & talked about my artwork & why I'm not famous (I have a few theories) & somehow found ourselves discussing vegetarianism & I brought up the word fortified (I NEVER use the word fortified).

Josh & his friends laughed uproariously at the mention of this word. Turns out that very morning they had decided FORTIFIED was the word of the day!

Can you believe it?!

Neither could I. Considering the nature of my blog.

We had a good laugh about it & I thought about the phenomenal ability of the brain to record & store inconceivable amounts of information. And the uncanny. I think a lot about the uncanny. So much so that I'm starting to see IT everywhere. Ahhhhhh. 

Maybe it is just a necessary function of the brain to see a particular word (or number) everywhere you look after recently becoming conscious of it, but it sure is F-U-N!

And to up the uncanny factor, I later bought fortified milk & vitamins. And drank more beer!

...

In short, my friends, spontaneous visits from my brother are fortifying to the spirits & my time with him reminded me that my life is truly uncanny. Every day.

Devils for life!

...

Part 1 of A Season in Hell
Arthur Rimbaud
translated by Bertrand Mathieu

A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing.

One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up.

I armed myself against justice.

I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure's been turned over to you!

I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it.

I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity.

And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot.

So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the final squawk! it dawned on me to look again for the key to that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more.

Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves I was dreaming!

"You'll always be a hyena etc. . . ," yells the devil, who'd crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Deserve death with all your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!"

Ah! I've been through too much:-But, sweet Satan, I beg of you, a less blazing eye! and while waiting for the new little cowardly gestures yet to come, since you like an absence of descriptive or didactic skills in a writer, let me rip out these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.

...

Schadenfreude

I like birthdays.

Someone I love very drearily celebrated his 30th birthday just two days ago! Having passed that milestone myself a few years back, I take great pleasure in his misfortune. Ha ha ha.

Just imagine being THIS guy:

Tagline: It'll be a killer party!

The best thing about birthdays isn't the eating, the drinking, nor is it even being scary (or merry if you prefer that), it's the trivial coincidences. You know, like who else was born (or died) on the same day. Now that's fun!

My lovely friend shares his day of birth, August 6th, with numerous (in)famous folks: Alfred Lord Tennyson (& he died the day before MY birthday!), Edith Roosevelt, Dutch Shultz (American gangster & bootlegger), Andy Warhol, Vinnie Vincent, Elliott Smith, Geri (Ginger Spice) Halliwell, JonBenét Ramsay, a whole slew of sporty folks (particularly cricket players) & Punky Brewster (Soleil Moon Frye)!

And, I'll bet you didn't know, four Pope's died on August 6th, as did Ben Johnson, Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway, Diego Velasquez, Rick James, & John Hughes.

Pretty uncanny, right?

Nope.

Blame it on the Birthday Paradox.

What's that you say? Well, it's got a lot to do with Probability Theory. The Birthday Paradox states that you only need a group of 23 people for there to be a 50% chance that at least one random pair of said people will share the same birthday. I'm a bit lost when it comes to the actual mathematics behind the Birthday Paradox, but I do understand the implications.

We are often surprised to learn that we share our birth day with someone else (particularly when that person is a complete stranger we have just met), yet there is actually a pretty good chance that it can happen. A much better chance than we intuit. By the time you reach about 57 people or so, the chances are 99%! Holy coincidence! For further reading, this guy puts it nicely (and with comic flair & only a smidgen of math): http://www.damninteresting.com/the-birthday-paradox

There is nothing supernatural (uncanny) about sharing your birthday with someone else. It's completely probable & predictable.

...

All Things Will Die
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing
Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing
Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating
Full merrily;
Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart will cease to beat;
For all things must die.
All things must die.
Spring will come never more.
O, vanity!
Death waits at the door.
See! our friends are all forsaking
The wine and the merrymaking.
We are call’d–we must go.
Laid low, very low,
In the dark we must lie.
The merry glees are still;
The voice of the bird
Shall no more be heard,
Nor the wind on the hill.
O, misery!
Hark! death is calling
While I speak to ye,
The jaw is falling,
The red cheek paling,
The strong limbs failing;
Ice with the warm blood mixing;
The eyeballs fixing.
Nine times goes the passing bell:
Ye merry souls, farewell.
The old earth
Had a birth,
As all men know,
Long ago.
And the old earth must die.
So let the warm winds range,
And the blue wave beat the shore;
For even and morn
Ye will never see
Thro’ eternity.
All things were born.
Ye will come never more,
For all things must die.

...

Happy Birthday, Devin. You may be OLD, but at least you're not dead!

...

Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?
                                                               -Joseph Conrad (from Lord Jim)

Today's post is inspired by death.

But everything you do is inspired by death, you say!

True. Get used to it. Life is inspired by death!

And at the heart of the uncanny is the frightening knowledge of our own mortality. Face it, folks, death gets us all. (Except Elvis, he'll still be around a hundred years from now.)

So, to celebrate death ... a little trivia. Who doesn't love trivia!?

On this day in history, not one but two of my favourite authors died. Sad isn't it? But not in the same year at the same time of day in the same city in the same bed etc. etc. That would be truly uncanny!

However, both were masters of the uncanny in their own way & they did die exactly 40 years apart.

Aug.3, 1924, Joseph "The horror" Conrad. Born on the 3rd, died on the 3rd ...

& on the same day, 1964, Queen of the grotesque, Flannery O'Connor.

I first read Heart of Darkness in highschool & it was the third book to profoundly affect me. The first two were an awesomely illustrated Bible that belonged to my Mom and Stephen King's The Tommyknockers. (I've read nearly everything the man has written & this definitely is NOT his finest, but it got me started.) It wasn't until first-year University that I read A Good Man is Hard to Find, and I felt the same way about its stories.

I promised myself this would be shortwinded & long-sighted.

The way these stories made me feel made me want to read more stories just like them.

A bouquet of books

Do I really need four copies of the same book? Does Igor need the Count?!

So I began collecting books. & reading more books. & more books.

How does one kill fear? Start with books, I suppose.

...

from Muipotmos, or The Flight of the Butterflie
Edmund Spenser

Like a grimme Lyon rushing with fierce might
Out of his den, he seized greedilie
On the resistles pray, and with fell spight,
Vnder the left wing stroke his weapon slie
Into his heart, that his deepe groning spright
In bloodie streames foorth fled into the aire,
His bodie left the spectacle of care.

...

p.s. I'm off to read Hoffmann's The Sandman.

Don't let them bury me, I'm not dead!

Today is Wes Craven's 71st birthday. And what better way to celebrate than with spiders, snakes, psychotropic drugs, Haitian voodoo, premature burial ...

& zombies?!

One of my favourites from the 80's--a sleek, subtle(r), underrated thriller courtesy of the gore-master himself--I can't even count how many times I've seen this movie:

Loosely based on ethnobotanist Wade Davis's non-fiction account of his investigations into Haitian zombification, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) stars Bill Pullman as the ethnobotanist/anthropologist Dr. Dennis Alan, and also features Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield & a pre-CSI Paul Guilfoyle (he's so young & cute!).

For those of you who enjoy this sort of thing, here is the American trailer:

...

Well shot & decently acted, this movie practically screams das Unheimliche. Pullman is quite believable as the relentless doctor, however, south-afrikaner Zakes Mokae steals the show for me as creepy witch doctor/bokor Dargent Peytraud.

Just look at this face:

...

I first saw The Serpent and the Rainbow around the time it was released & not surprisingly, it still resonates with me today, some 20 odd years later! This is one of those movies that sticks with you.

The dream sequences in this heavily atmospheric & somewhat disjointed--but never too disjointed--film are quite literally nightmarish. The effects are realistic. The setting is haunting & lush. And the subject matter—zombification—well, everyone who knows me knows how I feel about zombies!

Good enough to eat ... you.

Of all the movie monsters out there--and there are so so many--the zombie is perhaps the most frightening. Why? A loaded question, but I think it stems from the fact that zombies are most like us. In fact, they are us. Only an us that is 'un'conscious, dead to the world.

While the zombies of our imagination are typically (thanks mostly to Romero) portrayed as flesh-eaters, real zombies prove to be much less opportunistic & dangerous. The zombie originated in Haitian folklore (something Craven definitely kept in mind). There have been hundreds of (mostly unsubstantiated) accounts of men & women returning from the grave after allegedly being poisoned by some kind of drug that rendered them 'lifeless,' yet years of research has only turned up a few toxic fish-based powders that mimic the effects of anaesthesia. When the powder wears off, these 'zombies' usually return to their homes to 'haunt' their families, or as is suggested in the movie, are dug up by some evil houngan's henchmen & put to work. Like Christophe (played by Conrad Roberts, who coincidentally had a part in an episode of CSI).

*Spoiler alert*

In our film, the powder is blown onto our hero's face and he soon finds himself paralyzed but completely conscious of his surroundings. Here's where things get tricky. While under the influence of this drug, he has all sorts of hallucinations, including visions of being buried alive! And the viewer has the pleasure/pain of experiencing it right alongside him through a series of clever POV shots. In this case, the shots are quite effective. (Another director who successfully uses a similar type of POV shot is Aldo Lado in La Corta Notte Delle Bambole di Vetro aka Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)).

Forgive me for the seemingly unrelated intrusion, but if you have seen both movies you will know what I mean. And besides, it gives me the opportunity to show you the killer cover: 

Dig?

...

But now, back to the zombies.

Although they aren't dangerous in the same way modern brain-slurping gut-munching talking running thinking zombies are, traditional zombies aren't any less sinister. The ramifications of zombification are obvious: good ol' fashioned mind control. What better way to force someone to bend to your will than to remove all traces of (self)consciousness from his/her mind!

Sidebar: Governments have long used prescription drugs & alcohol to 'legally' exert mind control over their public (but that is a subject for another kind of blog!).

...

(It always comes back to mind control, doesn't it?)

If you like your zombie movies crunchy & bloody & not the least bit serious, don't bother with The Serpent and the Rainbow. Although there are plenty of scares, Craven is restrained here & so are his zombies. Which brings me to the point.

(Does there really have to be a point?)

No. But it's almost always where things start to get weird.

*Another Spoiler alert*

Dr. Alan enters a strange world when he arrives in Haiti. Everything about the place is contrary to what he knows/thinks he knows. He is arrested several times by the police, framed for murder, nearly castrated, beaten, sent home at gunpoint (but not without his prize) only to return to Haiti to be drugged & subsequently buried alive & unearthed/brought back from the dead (if only in his mind). And finally, after defeating the bad guy, our battered hero emerges from the battle triumphant. (Sounds like a story I once read ...)

...

Usually what appears to be uncanny turns out to be less than mysterious, nothing more than our minds playing tricks on us. But there are those rare instances where it turns out to be something more.

We could travel to Haiti in search of zombies, completely confident in the versimiltude of our own realities.

Like Dr. Alan.

We could be researchers looking for a specific kind of drug that creates these zombies. A drug certain companies would be very interested in acquiring.

Like Dr. Alan

We could be tourists simply looking for a tax break.

Like Dr.Alan.

And we could find nothing but civil unrest, corrupt city officials, & some hallucinogenic fish powder & the occasional strange custom.

Like Dr. Alan.

Or, we could find ourselves, like Dr. Alan, unable to wake from some terrific nightmare.

We could find ourselves

zombified.

...

From Towards Break of Day
W.B. Yeats

Was it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day?

Fare well.

I had an entire story planned out.

It began: My friend Meaghan knows this story. It involves a green scarf.

Like this one:

The green scarf I found on a sidewalk not far from my apartment. The green scarf I picked up, took home & washed & hung across my window.

It's a very pretty scarf.

Like I said, I had an entire story planned out.

But it's one of those stories that seems almost too fate-driven. You know, the kind of story that ends with the realization that the scarf once belonged to Meaghan long before we met. She last wore it to a party. When she woke up the next day, it was gone. I found the scarf lying on the sidewalk around the corner from her friend's house. And you say, yeah, yeah, I've heard that one before. Or maybe you are amazed. Or?

This is Meaghan's green scarf:

It's very pretty, isn't it?

So is Meaghan.

So is the glockenspiel I originally mistook for a xylophone. I won't make that mistake again!

...

Meaghan is leaving today. She stopped by with Alex on her way out of town. We performed some goodbye rituals: laughing smoking hugging & I gave her a gift.

A green scarf.

...


Vancouver Lights

Earle Birney
From: Fall by Fury. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1977. With permission of the Estate of Earle Birney.

About me the night      moonless      wimples the mountains
wraps ocean      land     air      and mounting
sucks at the stars      The city      throbbing below
webs the sable peninsula      The golden
strands overleap the seajet      by bridge and buoy
vault the shears of the inlet      climb the woods
toward me      falter      and halt      Across to the firefly
haze of a ship on the gulps erased horizon
roll the lambent spokes of a lighthouse

Through the feckless years we have come to the time
when to look on this quilt of lamps is a troubling delight
Welling from Europe's bog      through Africa flowing
and Asia      drowning the lonely lumes on the oceans
tiding up over Halifax      now to this winking
outpost comes flooding the primal ink

On this mountain's brutish forehead with terror of space
I stir      of the changeless night and the stark ranges
of nothing      pulsing down from beyond and between
the fragile planets      We are a spark beleaguered
by darkness      this twinkle we make in a corner of emptiness
how shall we utter our fear that the black Experimentress
will never in the range of her microscope find it?      Our Phoebus
himself is a bubble that dries on Her slide      while the Nubian
wears for an evening's whim a necklace of nebulae

Yet we must speak      we the unique glowworms
Out of the waters and rocks of our little world
we conjured these flames      hooped these sparks
by our will      From blankness and cold we fashioned stars
to our size      and signalled Aldebaran
This must we say      whoever may be to hear us
if murk devour      and none weave again in gossamer:

                                      These rays were ours
we made and unmade them      Not the shudder of continents
doused us      the moon's passion      nor crash of comets
In the fathomless heat of our dwarfdom     our dream's combustion
we contrived the power      the blast that snuffed us
No one bound Prometheus     Himself he chained
and consumed his own bright liver     O stranger
Plutonian      descendant      or beast in the stretching night--
there was light

1941