GOD! GIRLS! GUNS! PIE!

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:22:28 GMT

The lady with the M16 was there at the base this morning. I think I have a crush. THIS IS AWKWARD.

As if this didn't make me confused enough.

Anyway, here is a little one:

New Cracked Article!

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:49:25 GMT

6 Subtle Ways The News Media Disguises Bullshit As Fact

Please read/digg!

You And Me Could Write A Rad Bromance

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:25:18 GMT

I finally watched Six: The Mark Unleashed which was recommended to be by the kind estarmuerta. She wisely warned me beforehand that it was basically Christian propaganda, and I didn't realize the truth of that statement until the title card came up saying it was financed by some place called 'ChristianMedia.com' (real subtle, guys!). I guess when people say 'propaganda' these days I always assume they're exaggerating to some extent, but I think this movie was actually made for one of those Christian channels to play between their Left Behind marathons. In fact if I hadn't watched most of Avatar a few days back, it would have been the most propagandistic movie I'd seen all week. (Oh SNAP!)

So, I was talking here about the two main problems I have with 'Christian' media:

The miracles. Now, I don't mind movies that have 'miracles' in them, provided they're acknowledged as something both unusual and odd. Pulp Fiction and the Boondock Saints both have 'miraculous' events, but the whole point is that characters in the movies react to them as if they're strange and spend a lot of time trying to work out what happened and why. In most of the full-on religious movies and TV shows and books I've seen, miracles just happen, and the characters are like 'Oh, it must be just because God loves me' and shrug and move on. If they react at all. Which bears absolutely no resemblance to reality

Speaking of no resemblance to reality: Sex and violence. Oh, God. Now, I'm all for less graphic sex and violence in a lot of TV and movies, if only because a) writers and directors often use it as filler when they've got nothing else to say, and b) the lack of subtlety usually takes away from the story, especially where violence is concerned. (And I'm probably the only person in the world that doesn't like TV sex scenes at all: I want plot, not awkwardly posed actors pretending to orgasm for 15 minutes! Which usually makes me giggle!) But. There's a difference between portraying sex and violence subtly and tastefully and PRETENDING IT DOESN'T EXIST, AHHH.

Then sometimes they'll combine the two and have an act of violence about to take place before a MIRACLE TAKES PLACE and then it doesn't because GOD LOVES YOU. Which happens at least once in this movie (Or doesn't. I couldn't really tell what was going on, the production values were so low). Right. So in other words when someone raised on this stuff actually faces a bad situation in their life and angels don't miraculously intervene, they'll lose their faith. Good job, guys.

IDF MONDAY!!!

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:36:12 GMT

What more needs to be said, really.

By request

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:10:38 GMT

My short Legion review. It was requested by the Cracked people and then abandoned when it disappeared at the box office; we did the Horror Movies page instead.

If you can't be bothered clicking, I'll sum it up by saying that even with Paul Bettany, Adrianne Palicki, plenty of guns and the knowledge that I was getting paid to watch the movie, it was still a painful experience.

Oh, LJ.

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:20:02 GMT

Whether you've chosen to have children or live child-free, how and when did you (or will you) reach this decision? If you're in a relationship, did you (or will you) decide separately or together?

Submitted By croses

View 1533 Answers

It's good to hear from yet another source that conception is entirely an act of will.

Also, WHO THE HELL DECIDES SEPARATELY IF THEY'RE IN A RELATIONSHIP. "Honey, where are my birth control pills?" "Oh, I threw them away because I HAVE CHOSEN TO HAVE CHILDREN. NOW LIE DOWN."

Why I Can't Have Pets

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:33:45 GMT

So I’m inside the other day and I hear this weird squeaking, chirping sound from out back. At first I ignored it, but it was so weird and insistent that I thought maybe it was an injured bird or something and I should go check it out. So I go to the window and see this:

The chirping guy was the one in the air, who was flying around in circles right over the yard (I only caught a photo when he was relatively far away, but he was right there).

It took me a minute to figure out that the sounds were coming from him: at first I figured the eagles had injured a younger, smaller bird. (Here's what they sound like, btw.)

I mean, call me biased but given all the young men who paint them on trucks around here, I imagined bald eagles to sound… manlier.

Then, the other night I was about to fall asleep and the neighbor’s dog starts barking, which is normal. Except then as soon as he started, this other noise started up: first this creepy howling, then a bunch of loud yapping. It sounded like a wolf fighting with a chihuahua.

Me: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT
Husband: Don’t worry, it’s just a pack of coyotes.
Me: !!!
Him: It’s okay. They won’t attack humans unless they have rabies.
Me: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So now I have a trio of bald eagles and a pack of coyotes hanging out directly behind my house. There is only one way to solve this problem: BALD EAGLE COYOTE DEATH MATCH. I'm sure it's legal if I get the eagles' consent first.

IDF MONDAY

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:16:04 GMT

Sigh...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:39:42 GMT

There was a beautiful woman with an M16 guarding the gates at the base today. I wanted to get out of the car and ask her to pose for a picture for my LJ, but my husband said no. Also, these guys have a reputation for being a bit trigger happy and I didn't want to die.

I am now trying to think of a way to bring it up in case I see her again, in a way that doesn't get me arrested and/or killed.

It reminds me of when I was living in Brussels and they had this really insanely guarded US Embassy surrounded by barbed wire and men with machine guns and stuff, even though it was Brussels. Me and a ragtag group of multicultural backpackers were trying to take a picture of it, and the guard at the gate told us no. So a couple of the guys went to the building directly opposite the embassy, which had scaffolding up in front of it covered in tarp, and started poking their cameras through holes in the tarp and really obviously taking pictures right in front of the guards.

Ah, youthful fun. We were probably lucky not to get shot and cause a Belgium vs America international incident.

It has been a long time leading up to this.

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:16:35 GMT

But it’s finally done. The apex of my writing career, nay, my very life.

I present to you:

SPARKLENATURAL: A Fanfiction..

(For background info on Twilight, go here. For background info on Supernatural, go here. Both contain spoilers.)

Her skin was like a highway made of crystal that someone had broken their windshield across. It glittered with thousands of tiny rainbows. On every rainbow danced a tiny unicorn, as free and unfettered as the noble animals that she hunted.

But now, two tiny sparkly crystal tears glittered on her radiant face. Rosalie sobbed, wiping at her cheeks with her perfect sparkly hands.

“It’s not fair. Bella got to have a tiny mutant vampire baby and she didn’t even want one. Why can’t I have a baby?”

Emmet looked at his wife with concern. Ever since Renesmee had turned three and moved in with Jacob Black, Rosalie hadn’t been able to help Bella look after her anymore. He knew his wife was lonely. It didn’t help that Leah Clearwater had recently delivered a healthy child after being hooked up with some traditional Quileute fertility drugs.

Today, however, was different. Emmett had a plan to help his wife. It had taken months of beating Edward into doing research for him, but it had all been worth it.

“Rosalie,” he said, tentatively. He looked away, out of the window of their vampire mansion, taking in the staggering natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. On the distance stood a line of majestic Douglas firs. In front of them spread a sea of dark green Douglas firs. In the foreground, next to the house, a bank of tall Douglas firs summed up the beautiful image.

“Rosalie,” he continued. “I think I have an plan for solving your baby problem.”

“You mean our baby problem.”

“Yeah, that. Listen to me, Rose, I really think this will work.”

“Nothing works! I’m a vampire! We can’t have babies! Not even mutant ones!” Rosalie wrung her sparkly hands and sobbed some more.

“This will work. I promise. Now, we have to go to Vancouver, B. C. I will explain when we get there.”

Inside a shady tavern in Canada, Sam Winchester looked around uneasily, wary of any potential demons, ghosts, Kodiak bears or waitresses getting too close. Dean had made them drive 300 miles to this place because he said they had really good pretzels, but Sam wasn't sure he believed him anymore. The pretzels weren’t that good.

“So,” he asked his shorter brother next to him. “Can you tell me again why we agreed to meet with these people?”

“I told you,” Dean said. “We were in the area already, and he said something about vampires and hot women. I didn’t get the whole message.”

“He hung up on you?”

“We got caught up talking about football.”

“You – ” Sam stopped abruptly and turned as the door to the tavern opened. A ray of sunshine from outside pierced the dark room as a tall man and a blonde woman came in.

The two men watched in silence for a second. Then Dean said: “Are those people fucking sparkling.”

“Rosalie,” Emmett said triumphantly, “These are the men who are going to solve our problem.”

Rosalie looked wary, like she did whenever Edward and Esme tried to get them to join in with one of their family Josh Groban singalongs. But she sat down opposite the two men, who had in front of them two beers and a large bowl of pretzels. Emmett sat down next to his wife and patted her hand reassuringly. “Their father is John Winchester.”

“Dean,” Sam said. “You didn’t tell me it was another one of those couples.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t have come if I did.”

“John Winchester? That names sound familiar.” Rosalie uneasily picked up an empty beer bottle and toyed with it, before crushing it into sand like Superman, because she was a vampire.

“John Winchester’s genetic material is the most powerful force in the known universe,” Emmett explained. “He can produce a viable male heir just by looking intently at a nearby woman.”

“It’s true,” said Dean. “Me and Sam have over 70,000 half-brothers.”

“What about female vampires?” Rosalie asked.

“That’s the interesting part.” Emmett pulled the two crumpled photographs out of the pocket of his jeans. “I have photographic evidence that John Winchester impregnated at least two female vampires. Of course, he killed them both soon afterwards, so we can’t be 100% sure.”

“You guys are all forgetting something,” said Sam. “Our father’s dead. In fact we don’t even know where he is right now. He just kind of disappeared.”

“It’s okay. I have a summoning spell I got from the Volturi in exchange for handing Alice over to them. And they got it from John Edward.”

“Wait,” Rosalie interrupted. “How is a spirit supposed to impregnate me?”

“That’s the thing, Rose! John Winchester’s last appearance as a spirit resulted in seven pregnancies.”

“That’s impressive.”

“Also it was in a graveyard, so the women were all dead at the time.”

“That’s really impressive.”

“Okay, wait just one second,” Sam interrupted them. “Why exactly should we help you?”

“I thought you guys helped people. That’s what your ad in Hunters Digest said. It had a photograph!”

“You guys are vampires,” Sam said.

“Yeah,” added Dean. “You had a bunch of human-eaters staying at your house and you didn’t even seem that bothered. That’s kind of morally ambiguous, even for us. Also, like Sam said. You guys are vampires.”

“We’re vegetarians!”

“Yeah, but you sparkle. That’s really fucking weird. I don’t think we should help you. I think we should kill you.”

Emmett had prepared for this. He took a deep breath, and looked around the bar cautiously before pulling out his wallet.

“I’ll give you 200 bucks,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Dean.”

“What?”

“Aren’t you forgetting to tell them something?”

“Oh yeah, that.” Dean was quiet for a second and ate some pretzels, looking thoughtfully at Emmett's wad of cash.

“What is it?” Rosalie asked.

“There’s this thing,” Sam said. “Any person who has sex with a Winchester dies.”

“Well, I’m not technically a person.”

“She’s right,” said Dean. He started putting Emmett's money in his wallet. “They should be safe.”

“I’m not sure about that, Dean. The other day I jerked off to a porn magazine. Afterwards it burst into flames, and two of the models died of undiagnosed lung cancer. I really don’t think even a vampire could withstand that. And then there’s the other thing.”

“What’s that?” said Rosalie.

Dean sighed and put down his wallet. “Those 70,000 brothers we told you about?” He leaned forward. “They’re all dead.”

“Wait. You don’t mean you –”

“Fuck, no. What kind of fanfic do you think this is?”

“What he’s saying is that the Winchester DNA itself is also deadly,” Sam said. “It’s really a genetic fluke that me and Dean survived so long. And we've died like, eight times. Which means that even if you survive, your child will also be in danger.”

Rosalie crossed her arms. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“Really?” said Dean. “You couldn’t, just, you know, adopt?”

“Are you kidding?” Rosalie snarled. “This is the basis of my entire character. I can't give it up. Even if it kills me.”

“Okay. But don’t say we didn't warn you. Sparkly douchebags,” he muttered.

“What?” Rosalie asked with her vampire hearing.

“Nothing.”

Emmett stood behind a clump of Douglas firs, watching the scene in front of him intently. About a hundred yards away, across the car park of the cheap motel, Dean Winchester stood watch uneasily at the door as inside, Rosalie completed the spell for summoning John Winchester.

He shook his head, and chambered a round in his hunting rifle, careful to not accidentally crush the metal with his superhuman strength. Sure, he might be a sparkly vampire, but he had his pride. He would kill off the Winchesters so they wouldn’t go talking about impregnating his wife. Also, then he could get his 200 dollars back.

A faint noise from behind him made him turn. A shorter, gayer sparkly figure emerged from behind a nearby Douglas fir. He was wearing khakis and a knit sweater tied over his shoulders. Underneath that was a t-shirt saying “I Recycle.”

“Edward,” Emmett said.

“Hello, brother.”

“I guess you don’t want me to kill Dean.” Emmett sighed. He lowered the rifle.

“Oh, no.” Edward flicked his auburn hair out of his eyes. “Kill the heck out of Dean. Just don’t kill the guy inside.”

“Why not?”

“What is happening in there is very… important to me.” He smiled.

Emmett frowned in confusion. Since when had his brother been interested in heterosexual sex, let alone reproduction? “Why do you care, bro?”

Edward opened his mouth to explain, when there was a clicking noise from behind him. Sam Winchester was holding a sawed-off shotgun to the back of his head.

“I should have known,” Sam sneered contemptuously. “With the yellow eyes and the campiness and the tendency to make out with other dudes.”

“Edward!” Emmett yelled. “What is this fuckery?”

"Tell him, Edward."

Edward sighed. “We’re not vampires at all, Emmett. We’re demons.”

“What? How?”

“It's not important! Why do you want them to have sex?!” Sam demanded.

“Because John Winchester is the only force of nature that can overpower female vampire infertility. And vampires’ invincibility will cancel out the Winchester death curse. The half-demon army that Rosalie and John Winchester produce will take over the entire world!” Edward laughed, as evilly as a dude who drives a Volvo could ever laugh.

“Not if I stop you first," Sam said.

“Oh, please. If a gun could ever stop me, don’t you think Bella’s father would have killed me by now?” Then Edward did that thing where demons throw people around, and pinned Sam against the nearest Douglas fir.

“Edward, I don’t understand!" Emmett said. "All the blood drinking!”

Edward sneered. “I just really hate elk, gosh darn it. Do you know the amount of greenhouse gases those things emit?”

“How could you do this? How could you use my wife to take over the world with your sparkly demon army?!”

“I was always jealous of you, Emmett. You’re a man’s man. Women like you. Normal women. The only women that like me are underage girls with low self-esteem or elderly ladies who are deeply unsatisfied in their marriages. It’s like I can’t just be with a normal woman. Do you know what that’s like?”

“I kind of do,” said Sam.

“Shut up!” Tears welled up in Edward’s eyes. “I can’t even go to a Fallout Boy concert without practically being gang-raped by Twimoms.” He sniffed. “Where are their children, dammit? Are these women even looking after them?” He shook his head. “I want this whole world to end, Emmett. Humanity doesn’t… deserve to live. Not like this.”

“I can’t let you do that, Edward.” Emmett said. He raised his rifle, and shot Edward in the neck.

Edward fell back against a nearby Douglas fir and then stood back up, growling. “I told you a gun couldn’t stop me!”

“Yeah, but this can,” said Sam from beside him. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the crumpled receipt from the bar, and threw it away, into a clump of young Douglas firs.

“Dammit!” yelled Edward, blood still pumping over his sparkly neck. “You can’t just litter like that!”

“That’s not all, Edward,” said Emmett. “That rifle shot ejected a cartridge somewhere. It’s lying on the forest floor right now. Waiting for a bird to accidentally swallow it.”

Edward stood in confused, impotent rage, torn between the two pieces of litter, blood continuing to flow down his glittery arms, dripping over his “End Poverty Now” bracelet. And then Sam shot him.

Half of Edward’s head graphically exploded, covering Emmett and Sam with chunks of chiseled Greek God and topaz eyes. Emmett didn’t hesitate: he jumped forward and quickly tore his brother’s head off, tossing the mangled piece of flesh off into the forest. Edward’s body fell to the ground, twitching, blood soaking into the soil and Douglas fir needles.

“Emmett!” Sam yelled hoarsely. “How do we make sure he’s dead?!”

“We have to burn him!” Emmett shot the body again, which was still twitching. “It’s the only way!”

“There’s lighter fluid in my backpack. In the trunk of the car!”

Emmett nodded, and using his vampire speed quickly ran to the car and got what he needed. When he got back Sam was holding Edward’s headless corpse, and was smeared all over with blood.

“Uh,” he said. “What were you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Were you… drinking his blood?”

“No.”

They looked at each other awkwardly.

“So,” Sam said eventually. “Are we going to burn this guy or what?”

“Well, I guess it all worked out,” said Rosalie as they stood in the car park afterward. Behind a patch of clouds, the sun was going down over a bank of distant Douglas firs. “The Winchesters survived, Edward is dead, and most importantly, I got my demon-spawn vampire baby.”

Emmett nodded in agreement. He had decided not to kill the Winchesters. One of them had just helped him save the world, after all. Also, thanks to them Edward was dead, which meant that Emmett wouldn’t have to listen to him playing Coldplay all night anymore.

“It’s not all over,” Dean said seriously.

“Yeah,” said Sam. “How are we going to stop this creature from reproducing and taking over the entire world, like Edward planned?”

“It’s okay. I will raise him to be a libertarian.”

Sam and Dean sighed in relief. Emmett put his arm around his beautiful wife and squeezed her happily. Everything was going to be alright.

Sam and Dean got back into the Impala, tired but happy after their vampire-demon adventure. Dean looked over at his brother. “Why are you wearing gloves? It’s not that cold.”

“Oh, no reason.” Sam said casually.

Dean shrugged and started the car.

The clouds moved, and a beam of late sunlight emerged from a tall Douglas fir next to the car, illuminating a patch of Sam’s neck without Dean noticing. In the dim golden light, his skin sparkled slightly.

THE END

...?

IDF MONDAY

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:59:48 GMT

This picture is awesome.

I am on the Cracked front page!

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 16:13:33 GMT

What Sort Of Horror Movie Are You In?

Please read/digg!

ETA: I am going to a gun show in Port Angeles today! Best day ever!

Also

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:37:27 GMT

The US government has a file on me that is about three inches thick and contains every bit of information I have ever submitted. I know I should be horrified about this invasion of privacy. But instead I can't help feeling kind of cool, because it is full of mug shots and fingerprint printouts and looks like the dossier for a wanted fugitive. I can just imagine some cool imaginary FBI agent flipping through it and shaking his head mournfully, and then commenting to his partner about where I went so wrong.

FORKS!!!!

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:03:14 GMT

We finally made it!

As I’m sure anyone reading this knows, I am ALL ABOUT Twilight. Well, I was kind of disappointed when most of the main characters didn’t die at the end, but still, it has vampires that sparkle, and that makes the town it is set in worth a visit. Especially if you live just down the road!

First we took a ferry to Port Townsend, and I’m only telling you this because I want to post this picture of the GPS:

Which not only thinks that we are in the ocean, but that we should turn left in 60ft and travel for 215 miles! On 'Engle Road', the road in the middle of the sea! Thank you GPS! (One thing Twilight has given my life is that I found out reading Midnight Sun that touchscreens work by sensing body heat. Which explains why the GPS hates me, because I have FREEZING HANDS.)

Anyway, once you’re in Port Townsend, it is a 100 mile drive West to get to Forks.

This diner has nothing to do with Twilight, but it was awesome, so I took a picture.

Now, driving in Western Washington is a bit like playing an old video game about driving that only has a limited number of background visuals that it just repeats over and over. The scenery is always trees. The same kind of trees.

And you know how a lot of older games have a very limited number of opponents, like there will be 100 ninja zombies that keep jumping out at you, and they always look the same and behave in the same way? Well this is the same. The only other vehicles on the roads are logging trucks and slightly smaller non-logging trucks.

There is nothing else. FOREVER.

But eventually, we got there.

Yay! This is the main street. Those were local police cars in front of us!

Note the beautiful weather! YOU LIE, STEPHENIE MEYER. Actually the town just looked kind of like the town where I’m from except way smaller. And with more Twilight!

This truck was outside the Forks Chamber of Commerce. Actually, I had seen a similar red Chevy truck parked near a bridge when we were passing into town. But due to the nature of the automobiles in the area, I couldn’t tell if it was a Twilight tribute or just some dude who had parked his truck there.

So obviously, the place was cashing in on Twilight fans:

And yeah, there were a few around. We saw at least one group of young girls. Also from what we saw, a big source of revenue is truck drivers whose wives make them stop at Forks and pick up souvenirs. Unfortunately, most of the 'Twilight' stores were kind of lame. We didn't go to them all so I can't make a sweeping judgement, but many were just normal local stores that had shoved a few posters in their display windows. Which is okay if you’re into local stores, I guess.

Luckily, there was at least one exception:

This store was awesome. It was huge and had stuff like this:

And this:

Now, maybe I’m the wrong person to comment here because I don’t find Edward attractive anyway, but is this really the best picture to choose for a cutout? He looks like he has just remembered that he left the oven on.

One thing I regret is that I never asked any of the locals what they thought of the influx of Twilight fans. I meant to, but whenever we went to a store we got caught up talking about other things because they were SO NICE and all just wanted to talk to us about the military. But everyone that greeted us on the street seemed friendly, so I guess most people don't mind.

Anyway, on the outskirts of Forks there is a mysterious elk herd.

At least, I figured they were elk, because I’d never seen one, just eaten them. but they were just hanging around, chilling. I hope the people in the town knew they were there.

One thing that’s not mentioned in the books (that I remember, anyway) is that the ‘forest’ around Forks is actually tree farms.

I don’t really know how the Cullens could expect to live in their secluded home for all eternity, seeing that lumberjacks would probably come and CUT DOWN EVERYTHING AROUND THEIR HOUSE every fifty years or so. I guess that’s in an upcoming sequel or something.

In conclusion, I kind of wish I was a hardcore freelance journalist so that I could go back there and talk to all the nice people some more and write an IN DEPTH EXPOSE about Twilight’s effects on the town and the psychological makeup of the fans who go there. Because writing in depth exposes about sparkly vampires would be the best thing ever.

The Great Supernatural Rewatch, Pt 2.

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:05:52 GMT

Warning! Some crankiness and Latin below the cut!

So I finally figured out the main thing that’s bothered me about seasons 4 and 5, and it’s this: all the divine intervention. I think I only mentioned it in the last post, but one of the things I love about the first couple of seasons is the isolated, anonymous feeling the whole show has. I liked the fact that the hunters had it as a burden that their work was by necessity secretive and unappreciated. I liked the fact that John Winchester was this huge hero that saved thousands of people and that he died alone and didn’t even get a grave marker, just a tag left at his wife’s grave. Well, I didn’t like it, but it added a lot to the show.

Then in seasons 4+, not only do we suddenly have God (or at least angels) personally intervening in the lives of the boys on a weekly basis, we hear that they and their parents had a very important divine SPECIAL DESTINY from the beginning, and rather than being ordinary people forced into unrecognized heroics they were like, cosmically important ordained prophets or something. Um, okay. How is the viewer meant to identify with that on any level? I remember liking that sort of ‘anonymous loser suddenly finds out he has a special divine destiny’ stuff when I was 14 and still watching anime. I liked SPN because it seemed different and more grown-up.

And then there’s the character of Dean, whose main source of angst was that he was the normal, anonymous one next to his SPECIALLY DESTINED brother. His whole life was spent in the shadow protecting/guarding somehow-important Sam, and of course that would make a person justifiably angry and frustrated. Then, all of a sudden, we learn that DEAN TOO IS SPECIAL AND CHOSEN, and Dean… continues being just as angsty, if not more. Which makes him come off as sort of a dick. We’ve already had Sam whine about being special and chosen for three seasons, and he could get away with it because he is cute. But then suddenly, we have it in stereo! Oh yay :(

And THEN, there’s the God aspect. I still have flickers of hope (and I don't want any spoilers on this; if I'm wrong I will make a FULL APOLOGY in time), but at the moment it looks like Supernatural is going to be just another one of the dozens of genre shows and movies that parasitize Christianity without having the balls to take a side on the issue. Which means taking all the cool stuff like DEMONS and HELL and FAITH HEALING and CREEPY SYMBOLS and EXORCISING (under whose power? I mean why would exorcisms ‘in nomine dei patris omnipotentes’ work if there is NO DEUS OMNIPOTENS?) but chickening out when it comes to actually endorsing God or the Bible because that would be, like, divisive or something.

Other examples of this: Buffy, Angel, Hellboy, The Book of Eli (chickened out at the last minute, IMO), every biblical apocalypse movie ever

Counter example: Pitch Black (This movie is a beautiful religious parable and everyone should watch it!)

For me, it’s not even so much a personal religious issue. (Pitch Black is about Islam!) It’s just… cheap. Pick a side, dammit!

Oh well. At least Sam is still cute!

IDF MONDAY!

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:20:27 GMT

I went to Forks!

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 17:19:34 GMT

I saw many eagles and logging trucks! I bought a magnet! Pictures are coming soon!

In the meantime, here is a picture of me preparing dinner last week:

!!!!

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:31:38 GMT

GUESS WHERE I AM GOING TOMORROW!!

IDF MONDAY!

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:00:26 GMT

Suggestion from ONTD

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:54:42 GMT

Raw meat in TV/werewolf movies = edible red Play-doh put through a meat grinder to get ground-meat shape.

It works for me!

Suggestion on how they get TV weapons to look real = MAGIC.

And after writing that post about gore, last night I had a nightmare where I looked in the mirror and one of my front teeth cracked open and then half fell off and then BLOOD STARTED COMING OUT. AAHH.

SPN 5.14

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:08:34 GMT

I am not sure if I should keep doing weekly episode reactions, because it seems like hardly anyone on my friendslist actually watches the show anymore, and to tell the truth I'm losing interest myself. But this week was an Edlund and there isn't another one for a while, so:

Does this mean that all of the goths and emo kids in the town weren't affected? What about the clinically depressed people? Okay, I am technically making fun of a serious mental illness here but Dean is still walking around being a functional member of society. Well, maybe not quite that, but he's not lying in bed peeing in a bottle so he doesn't have to get out of bed and/or wishing he had the strength of will to get up so he could kill himself, so there's obviously people around who are more 'ded inside' than him. I would like to have seen those deleted scenes

I am very curious how they film all those 'people eating raw meat' scenes in SPN and werewolf movies. Do they use real raw meat and just make really sure that it's clean and correctly handled? (After all, you can eat real raw horse meat!) Do they dye/CGI color cooked meat? Do they use something else? I am curious!

While we are on it, why do movie/TV weapons look really fake in pictures and real life and really real on screen? I mean I saw the real weapons they used in Aliens in the sci-fi museum and they looked ridiculous. How do they do it? Hint: your answer should include the phrase 'tape a bunch of cats together.'

This was...really gross. And now I think about it, all of the grossest SPN scenes have been Ben Edlund episodes. The 'lost a fight with a fan' guy, the 'razor in mouth' scene, and now THIS ONE (which I only saw from between my fingers.) I can't remember if he did the horrible teeth-falling-out scene but I'm willing to bet that he did. DUDE. YUCK.

It's FICTION TIME

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:00:26 GMT

For the sake of clickington . Contains adult themes.

The New Hole

She was still forever now, eyes blank like shallow glass. They stared past me as the man next to me pulled me up, as the voices rushed past my ears, as the lights went on and the pain in my wrists started to grow. But I was calm now; the storm in my mind calm and dulled. It was over.

***

I saw Katie in the supermarket after work, as I ordered my organic pre-marinated dinner meat from the lady behind the counter. There was a man next to her, and he held the handle of the cart next to her as she saw me and paused on her way past the fresh seafood. I wanted to pretend she wasn’t there, but my head was in her direction and I couldn’t pretend that I was too fixated on the reduced-price shrimp sign to notice her.

She smiled at me. I don’t know what my face looked like. The man – taller than me, thinner, pleasanter – moved the sides of his mouth up a bit. He moved the cart forward, and she put her hand on his forearm, gently, guiding it so that all three of them moved past me smoothly. I stood there, the wrapped packages of raw meat held tight against my ample stomach.

I went home to Kayla, and after dinner we made love in the bedroom, her body warm and comforting. Afterwards I lay for a long time looking at the big windows, the stark room and the closet, half-empty since Katie left. It was still the room of a man who lives alone.

I woke up around three. The numbers on the clock on the table near my head were still dim, the dawn-imitation bulb above them dark. It took me a minute to realize what was wrong, where the emptiness I sensed was coming from: I was alone in the bed.

I sat up, my mind fuzzy still. The house was silent; the double glazing blocked out any noise from outside, and it sounded as empty as it was.

I swallowed. My body felt weird, twisted, like I’d slept on something wrong, but that was quite usual these days. I hit the clock to drive out the worst of the darkness, and the room filled with dim blue LED light that I used to find my way to the door.

The corridor was empty. Although my body was alert my mind was still attempting to reboot; all that was there was a sense of fear, muted because of drowsiness rather than anything else.

I moved forward on the polished floor, leaving the cone of faint light behind me, and as I opened the door of the spare room I could feel goosebumps rise on my arm.

Kayla was there, lying on the bed.

I sat down beside her, put a cautious hand on her leg, chilly from lying on top of the covers. I frowned and thought about it. Was it the sleep apnea? I hadn’t been sleeping well since Katie left. My boss claimed he’d spoken to me on the phone without me actually waking up. Apparently I swear a lot more when I’m asleep.

It must have been seeing Katie again. It had messed up my sleep patterns, made me do stuff. I thought of the man back in the supermarket, glanced back at Kayla, and then stood up. I couldn’t spend the night here.

***

At work the next day I pulled out my phone once or twice, pretending to be looking at tech stocks when I was actually thinking of calling Katie again. She’d smiled at me, that meant it wasn’t completely over, right?

What stopped me was the thought of the new man, the way he smiled at me, like he thought I wasn’t a threat. If I called he might think of me and smile like that again. I imagined them sharing a laugh, and the thought made me want to crush the iPhone in my hand.

That night I wore my sleep apnea mask, fell asleep with one arm across Kayla’s warm back.

I knew she was gone again before I even woke up properly. I tore the mask off and sat up. This time there was no fuzziness; I immediately felt almost incapacitated with panic, muscles tensed, breath held.

Once again, the room was black except for the pale numbers and the square of light around the curtains. This time I didn’t hit the dawn simulator. I stood up quickly, breaking the panic’s hold, and hit the light switch.

It worked, partly. The room suddenly felt like a lone streetlight in the middle of a dark street in a bad neighborhood; maybe you feel safer, but it just means that they can see you better.

No, there was no reason to think like that. It’s just panic. The voice of reason was there, weak and muffled.

I opened the door again, shakier this time, stepped out into the black.

She was in the spare room again. I stood for a while, taking it in, breathing deeply. This time I didn’t sit down next to her, just backed out, closing the door behind me.

I took the day off work the next day; the boss didn’t question me; maybe something had been obvious about my face the day before. I drove down to the port and sat in my car for a while, watching the ships and the bridge and eating takeaway food. Then I drove, out of the city where there was no traffic, to clear my head. It started to rain in the afternoon, as I was coming home.

We didn’t make love that night. It took me a long time to fall asleep; I left the curtains open and the streetlights were bright, cutting through my eyelids when I lay on the side facing them. The light reflected on the bare clean floor and the bare dresser and the almost-bare table beside the bed. Rain was still dripping down the glass of the windows, and I felt cold.

When I woke up again, around three, I already knew what had happened.

This time was different. This time I knew it wasn’t the sleep apnea; I couldn’t fool myself any longer. I reached my hand out towards the table, grabbed the cell phone sitting beside the clock. I dialed 911.

I sat up, leaning back against the wall behind me, as the lady picked up and gave her line.

“There’s a problem at my house. I need the police right away.” I opened the drawer under the bedside table as I gave her my address.

“Sir, what kind of problem is it?” she was asking as I hung up. She wouldn’t understand.

I pushed the magazine into the pistol until it clicked, and chambered a round. I pushed it into the back waistband of my boxers as I stood up and grabbed my black flannel dressing gown.

I planned on walking right by the spare room, and going right downstairs to the front door to wait. But I couldn’t. I stopped in the darkness, feeling cold, feet on the cool floorboards, and pushed the unlatched door.

Sure enough, she was in there, lying down on the bed in the empty room, pretty head resting on the pillows me and Katie had bought together at Pottery Barn.

I just looked for a minute, and then closed the door, letting it click shut beside me.

There was a long wait; I considered calling the operator back and yelling at her that the police didn’t know how to do their job in this city, but I’d let the landline lapse and the cell was still upstairs in the bedroom, so I didn’t. Instead I stood by the narrow window next to the door, looking for the lights. I was breathing deeply. I kept glancing back in the direction of the stairs. But my mind felt clearer than last night; there was no battle going on in my brain between fear and reason; one had taken over the other and it had gone quiet even though everything should be raging and breaking.

It couldn’t have been something in my sleep. Not again. Not this time.

When the knock came I yanked the door open; two officers, male and female.

“Sir, we got a call here about –”

“Upstairs,” I said and turned around, and one of them called something out to me afterwards, but I didn’t hear, and maybe I just looked that way because they followed me. My skin felt cold now; I was sweating, talking was too much effort.

More words behind me as I was on the stairs. I got to the door of the spare room and stopped and took a breath. Remembered her lying down in there. I heard the cops reach the top of the stairs, close behind. When I looked back, the man was glancing at his partner like they were communicating something, but I didn’t have time for that. “Inside,” I said.

In the encroaching blur, I saw the male officer draw his weapon. The female officer nudged me back, and I looked at the ceiling. I heard the door burst open.

Silence.

I opened my eyes, and then stepped into the doorway behind them.

“Is that a –”

But the female officer didn’t finish, because then I caught sight of the figure on the bed, and in a flurry of black flannel I’d drawn my own weapon. In one movement the trigger pulled, and then the bullet was deep into the silicone forehead like a stake into a vampire.

There was a blow from the side; the man had tackled me, and I hit the ground amongst the yelling and the woman kicked my hand and the gun slid across the floor and stopped beside the bed with the still figure on it.

But I didn’t pay attention, my mind clear and focused still because I knew then it had been justified, knew it was the right thing to do.

You see, she’d been sitting up.

HEY

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:16:34 GMT

I just want one of the following:

a) A creepy Protestant church led by male chauvinists who talk about Satan a lot and subjugate their well-meaning but simple congregations

b) A creepy Catholic church full of relics and bodies and danses macabres and people really into rosaries.

Maybe I’m being too fussy, but popular culture tells me I should be able to find these things on every corner! WHERE ARE THEY.

LOCK UP YOUR TRACTORS

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:31:07 GMT

IDF MONDAY

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:57:29 GMT

Yesterday I backed up my journal here using the excellent instructions here. Mostly because I don't trust foreigners and I want all my valuable Starbuck picspams preserved for posterity.

Speaking of which, I haven't heard much around the Internet about Caprica. I know the last two seasons of BSG kind of sucked, but is it really that bad? I am kind of getting fed up with the last TV show I actually watch regularly, and they will kick me off LJ if I am not watching at least one.