A warm Hallowe’en gives me the best gift ever:
That’s right, Melt! Melt in the Warm Warm Air!
#WritingFromIsolationWard
Category: Creative Work
It looks like there will be no “Death by Calamari” at the end of Watchmen next March; which is fine. Giant Squids be damned. Except when they would make the movie Awesome!
People Under the Stairs
This 1991 Wes Craven horror covers a few nice Horror Tropes; incestuous siblings that are also slum lords and serial child abusers, cannibals, moral lessons for children and good dinner manners among sexually abused teens. Good Wholesome fun. Everett McGill & Wendy Robie do an excellent turn as the fundamentalist, incestuous, hyper-greedy and hyper-violent Brother and Sister duo that run a long-form real estate slum empire and hoard gold. Kind of a Kinky and Violent Unca Scrooge really. They get their in the long run at the hands of the boys they’ve been keeping in semi-mute cannibal hordes in their basement.
How would this Movie Have been improved by the Presence of a Giant Telepathic Squid?
In the basement there is a giant pit full of water that has somehow escaped the notice of the local authorities and utilities. It is filled with decayed corpses of the “bad boys and girls” from the house. How does the dynamic duo keep their long term killing and eating of kids a secret, two words “telepathic squid” they are servants of some Lovecraftian Horror that lives in their basement, part of a long legacy of worshippers that have owned this land for centuries and they use their wealth to lure in people from all over to feed to their god. This latest Generation has become a little too close and stopped producing heirs to the legacy, thus they are forced to try and build a new generation from the kids they steal. In the Climax, instead of “Daddy” getting it, it’s a giant squid that blows up, but not before pulling most of the house down on itself. Extra special, it’s the squid that pulls Alice back into the house after she tries to jump from the roof to escape.
Escape from L.A.
In 1996, the sequel to “Escape from New York” arrived and showed us another vision of an American Future overrun with Moralists and Religion; right with God was the only way to live and it was all done for your protection. Undesirables are shipped off to the new Island of LA, a godless land lorded over by gangs of miscreants and Plastic Surgeons, where pop-eyed freaks are the best tour-guides in town and transexual gang leaders are able to fly on heavier than air personal rigs. Awesome.
How would this Movie Have been improved by the Presence of a Giant Telepathic Squid?
It’s on an island,why not surround it with the Godless Children of C’thulu and imbue it with Cyclopean Architecture. Can you think of a more godless place than an actual Godless Place? Imagine Snake Plissken having to fight creatures that are the mutated remains of the Rodeo Drive set? Ravening hordes of hairless Chihuahua/Rat/Frog hybrids that scurry from place to place, devouring the newly arrived. Replace Che Guevera lookalike with a Che Geuvera lookalike, with tentacles and you have a vastly improved horror setting that let’s Snake Plissken blast them with impunity and makes AJ Langer’s character all the more tragic, seduced by a squid indeed.
Also, wouldn’t Steve Buscemi look great as a Shuggoth?
The Bridges of Madison County
Clint Eastwood and Meryl Street grit and snarl their way through a romantic tale of too greying at the temples….yawn. This 1995 Adaption of the Robert James Waller novel might have set the hearts of many a middle aged woman to puttering, but ugh. Snore. Boring was invented to describe this ploddng artifice of narrative and plot. Squint all you like Clint, no awards are deserved for this steaming pile of Crap.
How would this Movie Have been improved by the Presence of a Giant Telepathic Squid?
How could it not, replace the plot with a series of small towns that have been depopulated by attrition and ennui, have Clint and Meryl happen upon a small child at said bridges, tossing bits of his family into the waiting maw of a passing Squid and you have a horror masterpiece waiting to happen.
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble
As if his years on Welcome Back Kotter were not enough reason to shun and avoid John Travolta, he develops a fatal disease that forces him to live (and love) in a plastic bottle. Everyon say Awwww when he pines for the girl (Glyniss O’Conner) next door and finds love through the plastic skin.
How would this Movie Have been improved by the Presence of a Giant Telepathic Squid?
Plastic Bubble? More like, fresh wrapped Squid Food. Tod Ludbich is being kept invoilate for his 21st birthday by his cultist parents. Food for their forgotten Squiddy master. Only the love of the Girl Next Door can save the Boy in the Bubble from his fishy fate. Sometimes the Crap just Writes Itself, like the un-squid filled version does.
Vlad has seen Better Days. The whole Vampire mythos is about as stale as a series of Animated Bloodthirsty Corpses can be. Vampires have been KungFu Artists, Cowboys, Criminals and Oversexed Kittens.
Francis Ford Coppolla gave us Dracula’s story as a timeless Love Story, a Romeo and Juliet between a fallen Holy Soldier and his lost Wife.
Vampires have even been a sexy alien menace.
It’s time for a new Dracula, abandoning everything that has gone one before. A Vampire in a world that has no concept of it. Imagine a teenage girl, finding that she has died in a freak accident on Church Grounds, finding herself in a coffin. Forced to dig her way out she’s lost and disoriented, it’s been weeks since she died. She’s ravenous, she drains a family dog, then vomits the blood. It’s not animal blood she needs.
While the Vampire priest has been done (to death) the Vampire Postal Clerk hasn’t. A Documentary style Horror/Comedy about a secretive man who is charged with being a pedophile and is instead found to be a vampire, touching off a worldwide hunt for the Vampires.
Dracula was never a Vampire. He was always just a human pretender, but was clever enough to fool whole swathes of humanity. When his secret is close to discovery, he seeks out a real vampire, a monster too terrifying to be real, unleashing a massive wave of “true” vampire bats that go on to infect a massive swath of the population of Europe. Dracula is then forced to battle the Vampires he was pretending to be.
Security Chief Mike Pendegrass spent his younger days working as a beat cop in Saint Paul; turfing drunks from bars and keeping the peace when local kids got out of hand. He never made it beyond Sergeant and didn’t aspire to anything except an easy retirement. When his Captain had decided to “clean up” his department, Mike Pendegrass had been caught up in an Internal Affairs shakedown that took out 30 police, all marked as “Dirty” and summarily dismissed from the force. 5 Years later, Mike Pendegrass was exonerated on all charges but left out of work and without his pension. Mike Pendegrass took his 20 years of beat cop and turned it into 15 more years of Security Guard at Melberton and Furlinger building Security Limited.
At 56, Mike was not a spring chicken anymore, but he was the Boss, and had a cushy desk job that paid better than any beat copy could have aspired to. Most days he came into the office, sat at his desk and confirmed and signed reports from the day before, sometimes checking security footage to confirm the the accounts of his officers. The rest of the day he could watch some TV, surf on the Internet and chat on the phone, a cushy well-paid job for the increasingly paunchy Top Security Guard at the Feldex building.
The odd crises that cropped up around large buildings tended towards power outs, fires and the odd bomb threat. Mike’s job was to coordinate the response of the Security Team with building Relations and make sure that while secure, the building’s tenants were not overly inconvenienced by any of the actions of the Security Team. This morning, there was a report of an alarm from the roof, someone had opened one of the roof access doors near the elevator engine room and left it unlocked.
“Boss, there’s a problem up on twenty-five” the radio bleated the voice of Ralph Furlinger, nephew to one of the Execs at M and F. “There’s blood all over the stairs going to the roof, man”
“Say again, roof” Mike sat up straight and tabbed through the cameras on 25 looking for the stairs. Sure enough, in technicolor there was a bloody mess all over the stairs. “Ralph, back away from the scene and close off the area. Don’t let anyone near the stairs. I’ll call the Police and get someone up ASAP.”
“Roger that” Mike watch Ralph cordon off the area with Caution signs and take up watch while Mike called the police.
“Hey, this is Security Chief M. Pendegrass over at the Feldex Building on East 7th, yeah, near the Wells Building. We’ve had some sort of incident on the 25th, there’s blood all over the place. We need someone to come check this out. We’ve secured the area, but it’s visible to the tenants. Thanks, I’ll meet your guys at the front Entrance”
Five Minutes later, two police in street uniforms arrived to accompany Mike to the 25th floor. They rode in the elevator, not speaking beyond introductions and getting basic information. They were barely beyond rookies and Mike knew that they were just there to make sure that it wasn’t some sort of prank.
When they got to the 25th Ralph stood aside while Mike and the Two officers walked over to the Roof Access stairs and got a look at the Situation. The Police asked for the lights to be dimmed, Mike radioed to the Security desk to ask for the lights in that section to be halved, in the gloom the police sprayed a small patch of the red fluid with what Mike guessed to be Luminol and passed a small black light over it, confirming that they had bodily fluids when it lit up.
Mike Radioed for the lights to come back up.
Then everything went Dark, then Blue. The Emergency lights had come on.
“What the hell is going on?” Mike asked sternly into his radio, “did you kill the lights”
“No Chief, the whole building just went red”
“Okay, Patch me into the PA and I’ll make sure that we cover ourselves…Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Security Chief Mike Pendegrass, please remain in your offices and keep the stairs clear at this time. I repeat please keep the stairs clear at this time.” He clicked off his radio and turned to the Police.
“Fellas, it looks like we have to problems on our Hands. I’ll leave Ralph here to help you guys out, I’ll meet anyone else you call in at the front, just have Ralph Page me. If you’ll excuse me” The police turned and began to scan the area with small hand-held maglites they pulled from their belts. The younger of the two began to talk into his radio, which suddenly burst to life with screams and wails.
“…SSQQQUEEEEEE… Holy Shit! Holy Shit… Do you see that in the Sky?….SSSHhhhhSSSSSSQUAAAAAaA Officer Down at 7th and Marquette, Officer Down at Aaarrrrrrgh!….SSSShhhhhh Numer 242 requesting Backup…..” The Two young officers stiffened and looked to Mike for his leave.
“I’ll call up some of my guys to lock this area down, but it sounds like there is a real crisis going on out there. Tell you what, set up shop downstairs in my Security Office and call in from there”
Mike summoned some guards from the outdoor patrol and called for all but the emergency Exits to be locked down securely. “Now Here this, this building is to be locked down, no one goes anywhere, all exits are to be monitored, all entrances are to be locked and guarded. I don’t want anyone getting in or out without our knowledge.” Mike clipped his radio to his belt as a chorus of affirmations came through the speaker.
The two beat cops beat it down the stairs leaving Mike and Ralph to look at the bloody mess; Mike found a chair in an empty office and sat down. He pulled out his cell phone and tried to call his wife, no signal. Ralph made a noise behind him.
“Chief, you gotta look out there” He pointed into the office that Mike had pulled the chair out of, “there’s something wrong with the sky”
Mike Pendegrass, Security Chief of the Feldex building stared out of a window on the 25th floor and straight into the twin setting suns in the yellow sky outside. Suddenly, not getting a signal on his cell phone was the least of his worries.
Frank James spent all of his day at work navigating Facebook looking for his ex-girlfriends. He only had three to look for, but they never seemed to pop up. Today he was looking for variations on Trudy or Trudelle or Trish, his first serious Girlfriend in High School. They had dated right until Graduation, when she dumped him the day after Graduation, Frank had been crushed. He had expected to Marry her during College and have kids before he turned 25.
Now Trudy and Frank were both in their 30s and unknown to Frank, Trudy was single and pining for him after years of failed relationships. She didn’t use Facebook and rarely used a computer except when demanded by work and even then she left it to an assistant if possible. Miles away, Frank toiled away at his keyboard, oblivious to the world, save Facebook.
CLICK
The Lights went out and Frank’s laptop dimmed, he tapped on, but when people started to move towards the exists, he started to get ready to leave. The PA crackled and hissed then a voice came out:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Security Chief Mike Pendegrass, please remain in your offices and keep the stairs clear at this time. I repeat please keep the stairs clear at this time.” The PA hissed a bit then everything was quiet.
““Aww, what the hell!?” Frank coughed in exasperation. He plopped down in his chair and began to unplug his laptop from the wall, planning to pack up his crap except for his Laptop and leave as soon as the all clear came down. The “official” downtime would give him a chance to catch up on his real work and since the power was down, so was the ‘net. No reason to search.
Frank looked up when Janice from the next cube had rolled her chair down the aisle to the window and then got back to filling out spreadsheets and poking tracking information into different databases inside the building. In about 20 minutes, he had finished his real work for the day when the light in the office came back on. No, it hadn’t, it was brighter though.
“Oh My GOD!” someone yelled from the other side of the Office, “Holy Shit, Look outside!”
Frank looked out of the window and squinted, there, on the horizon above the buildings were two massive lights, two suns. The Sky was yellow and there were two suns! Frank snatched his camera from his carrier bag and snapped some pictures through the glass. The lights dimmed and went orange as the suns began to sink towards the horizon.
Down in the street, people were panicking and running between the cars. Frank could just make them out in the dimming lights.
Janice joined him at the window.
“Hey, did you know we were bombed” she drank from a coffee cup, “like, today?”
Frank stepped back and looked at her, “what? What?”
“Yeah, I got a call a little while back from a friend in Moorehead, he told me that Saint Paul was bombed, most of it is gone”
“You seem healthy for a bombing victim Janice. You have to tell me your secret” Frank jibed, nervous.
“It’s this double sun, you know? It does wonders for the wounds. Fuck. This is fucked up. What the hell is going on?” suddenly serious, Janice flopped back into her chair and looked around the office, people were gathering in groups and talking on their cell phones.
Frank took his cell phone from his pocket and called his mother, no answer. He called one of his friends in another office, no answer. Then, no service.
All around the office people started getting angry, yelling about service. Somewhere an argument had blossomed into a fight which was getting louder.
Frank grabbed his chair and wheeled it over next to Janice, they sat in silence and watched the suns set in the distance, noting for the first time that they were setting in the north.
Life in a high rise office is alright; at least most of the time. You sometimes have to deal with recycled air or “sick building” syndrome, but you get great views from the windows and the feeling that you are above it all, down there on the ground. Some buildings even have mezzanine levels that extend from the building with gardens or cafe’s that let you get outside and look right down on the city below. The only time a high rise is a real pain is when the power goes out.
Which happens now.
“Click”
Shit! Janice thought, mid sentence in an email to her never-far-enough-away college buddy Burgess, a boy who never grew up and a townie from Moorehead. Burgess was having some kind of family crisis out there in Moorehead and had wanted Janice to come out and help him deal. Janice was mid “No fucking way…” when the lights had dimmed then flashed off, along with her monitor.
She stood up and watched the Prairie-Dog city that was the cube farm stand up together and look around, the murmers that never seemed to cease had paused and everyone looked at each other for some kind of idea what happened. The emergency lights clicked on and some people started to walk for the stairs. Janice started to pack up her stuff and join them when a voice came over the PA
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Security Chief Mike Pendegrass, please remain in your offices and keep the stairs clear at this time. I repeat please keep the stairs clear at this time” the PA hissed, beeped and went silent.
“Aww, what the hell!?” Frank James on Janice’s Left collapsed back into his chair, his dangerous weight nearly collapsing it. He unplugged his laptop and fired it up, intent on continuing his work.
Janice sat back down. but finished packing up her stuff and then rolled her chair over to the window, where there was enough light to read by. She took out a collection of short stories she had been carting around with her and began to read, waiting for the power to come back on or for the all-clear to leave.
Around the office, people either returned to what work they could or began to mill around in groups, gossiping or making guesses about what was going on. Janice tried to concentrate on her book, the story she was reading was about a bunch of guys in an office dealing with some sort of miniature priest outbreak, but she couldn’t get into it. She leaned her head against the floor to cieling window and looked down into the streets. Her phone lit up and vibrated at her hip.
“Janice, are you okay?” it was Burgess.
“What do you mean Burg’? Yeah, I’m cool” Janice noticed alot of people getting calls, all of them some variation of “I’m Okay” or “What? What do you mean Bombing?”
Janice stood up and pushed her chair to her desk and walked out to the cafe at the end of the office, to get a better view of the streets.
“Janice, Jan. A bomb went off in Saint Paul, it’s gone, blown up!” Burgess was frantic.
“Burg’ I’m in the office right now looking down at the street, there’s nothing going on down there, all the lights are out, but I can see cars and some lights out there. It’s just some sort of power out or some…”
Janice looked out at the sky, it had twin Suns set in a sickly green-blue.
“Burgess, I’m gonna have to call you back”
Over this past weekend, my family and I celebrated our Second Thanksgiving since returning from the USA. If one was to ask me what my preferred Thanksgiving is, I’d pick the US version, it comes later in the year and kicks off the Christmas Season (well, it used to) at the right time. Snow is falling and fall is dissolving into Winter.
Thanksgiving in Canada is a practical and parochial affair, marking the end (or is it the middle) of the Harvest. Coming before the snow even starts to fall (it’s going to be in the 70s today and I was sweating out in the muggy morning today if ever there was an upside to Global Climate Problems it’s muggy Octobers), Canadian Thanksgiving is a celebration of the agricultural largesse of the country and the bounties that it provides. Rather than a celebration of gorged appetites and pre-Christmas shopping. No Black Friday here, you see.
Despite my preference for the American version, I dutifully invited my In-Laws over to the townhouse for a meal (My Sister in Law declined, in order to work) and we bought what we thought would be a decent sized, but still quite small Turkey. In the end our 27 dollar monster turned out to be far more than we could easily handle and provided us with the raw materials for at least a weeks worth of meals if we played our cards right.
Two legs for soup, dark meat too. Two immense halves of the breast for sandwiches and just sliced for meals. The remaining bulk turned into curry and soup meat. The Bones were boiled overnight to make a nice stock, along with the carcass of a Chicken cooked on Saturday. The remaining greasy bits were disposed of, I hate to do that and wished for a bigger stock pot to boil the remaning “meat” out of them. It would need to be strained, but I could have had three big soup pots out of the remaining bits alone, I’m sure.
We’re trying to wring all we can from our nearly 30-Dollar Turkey, but it’s just so much. I’m tempted to return to our old rule of buying the more expensive (but utilitarian) Breast Only Turkey. Which I’m sure makes the whole waste matter all the worse, but at least I don’t throw out the bits and pieces on my own, you know?
Are Turkey bits good for Composting? Should I compost meats? I don’t know, I should look into that.
However, this is not really about the Turkey that sits in my Fridge and soup pot today. I’m actually looking at a much bigger Turkey today.
Canada prospered for a while in the hands of the Tories, but even my cursory and shallow understanding of the position of the Canadian Dollar and it’s buying power has revealed that the “prosperous” Canadian economy is really only so when the Petrodollar is valuable. Which is what the Harper Government has led us into. The whole value of the Canadian Dollar is tied to the price of Oil, and as that price slides, so too do the prospects of Canadians in terms of buying power and position on World Markets. Canada lives and dies on it’s raw materials exports and the Harper Government has, for the most part let this slide in deference to the Thanksgiving Banquets to the south. Of course, Thanksgiving isn’t for another month and a bit in the US and it looks like this might be the leanest in years. Instead of gorging on our Resources, it may be that they are sipping them from a thousand cuts and another Harper government may allow the cheap death of Canada to continue. Our National Turkey indeed.
Project Much?
Published by NiteMayr on October 27, 2008Yes, this is the ultimate goal of the the Scientists who predict envionmental collapse; they want to put their hands in your pockets. They have a vested interest in taking cash out of your hands and putting it into their pockets.
It is easy to look at someone else’s opinion and just say, well you’re crazy and want to steal my gold, so I don’t have to listen to what you say. Why not? If you do nothing, then die, what’s the harm? Even if the Scientists are correct and in 50 years New York is under a couple of meters of water, how does that affect you? It’s not like you’ll care, you’ll just pick up and move, problem solved.
Right?
It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it wasn’t for geologists (working for oil and mineral firms) and economics professors getting in on the action to tell us how foolish those guys are. If there is any justification for the person quoted above to just say it’s all hooey, they’ll take it. If Ming the Merciless himself spring forth from the pages of Flash Gordon and pronounced that Global Warming is Hooey, you’d have half the pundits telling us how while Merciless, Ming has run a whole Empire and knows something about taking care of planets. You’d have people fete’ing Ming at Values Voters summits, saying how he’s Right With God because believes in Dominion of Nature.
It’s that very phrase “Right With God” that drives a great deal of denyers to varying degrees. There is this belief that humanity is so small in the world that there is no way that the Actions of a few billion people who consume gigatons of resources each year could affect the health of the Planet as a whole. Just as God is so vast you can’t see or understand it; the Planet (as God’s special little playpen) is beyond Human Ken and therefore we can’t do anything to hurt or heal it, right?