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

...

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.