war and zombies

One researcher charts the appearance of zombie films in relation to historical events involving war or social upheaval....THIS is cool science!  Do you believe this correlation or is it the old crime and ice cream scenario?

let me tell you . . . . . .

 . . . . . . how much I love my niece and nephew!  An accidental phone call led to me meeting my brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew for lunch yesterday.  It was a wonderfully serendipitous meeting as I haven't seen them since we went to the beach in July.  It's a pain living an hour and half from each other, we're all busy and I'm not so good about making time for myself (which I'm trying to do better with, I'm taking a staycation next week!).  Anyway, I accidentally called D when I was trying to call my dear mother (one touch calling is nice until you call the wrong person) and I ended up meeting them for lunch like I said.  It is such a heartache to see them both so grown up.  I remember them both as itty bitty babies, changed their diapers, got thrown up on, have embarrassed myself just to see them smile...all that's going away now, or I guess the dynamics of it are just changing as they get older.  Anyway, I thought I'd share a timewarp moment with you!

Picture it: January 2001, Aunt Holley visits the hospital 

Please forgive the crap quality of this photo, it was taken with a Polaroid instant camera (this is not the model, but I thought I'd include it for the youngsters so they wouldn't be left out).  If you look closely, you can see the S's left nostril is clogged up with a giant buggar that we all got to see close up soon after this photo was taken when she discovered it.  It was a wonderful age for buggars :)  I wasn't able to be around much when S was an infant and we had a rocky relationship when she was a toddler but now we're tight (or at least I think so).  However, C seemed to come into this world smiling at me and he still does as you can see below.

This was taken this past 4th of July when I entertained them for a few days while D and K handled some unexpected household matters.  We went to DeSoto Caverns, the Montgomery Zoo, and to the movies to see Wall-E which is where this little photo strip came from.  Thanks to yours truly we all barely fit into the little booth but I think we managed to make it work.  S has the other copy of this and I hope she enjoys it as much as I enjoy my copy.

The fun part is that I get to see them all again on Saturday when we meet for lunch to celebrate my dad's birthday!  I'm sure I've mentioned before that D is my half brother and, of course, Daddy is who we share :)  Everyone is coming to the library and we'll eat somewhere close since I only get an hour for lunch.  I might be able to eeek a little more time out of Daxx the Magnificent as he is usually very patient when little delays pop up at lunch time.  I'll have to remember to tell him about it tomorrow.  Well, ya'll didn't come all the way over here to read about me making a mental to-do list so I guess I'll say goodnight!

oh my.....

.......what big tentacles you have!

For this first book cover, you really should get the full experience by clicking here (I could not find a larger image and it really should be viewed in all of its sci-fi glory).  And what's with the disembodied head and half-a-horse?  My entire department has snickered over this one almost as much as the Muffin.

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Attention: not to be confused with having anything to do with Miley Cirrus (or however the hell you spell it!)

That there is an R-V!  Nothing says romance like an old Winnebago (bad spelling is catching up with me again!) and a direct order!  No one has ever tried that line out on me so I can't speak towards its effectiveness but I'm going to go out on a limb and give it the ol' emperor's thumb down...

howling at the moon

so I have finished up the last book for my R.I.P. III Challenge!  I may get in a fifth book before October 31st but at least I finished the four I signed up for:

The Walking Dead: Book 1

Newes from the Dead

Land of Echoes

Bones of the Barbary Coast

additional title I may get to:

Flesh House

So, the other two books in Daniel Hecht's series about parapsychologist Cree Black have a subtitle of "A Cree Black Thriller" while this latest installment, Bones of the Barbary Coast, simply reads "A Cree Black Novel".  I can agree, but don't take that for disappointment!  I LuRvEd

 this book!  To me it read like some of Geraldine Brooks' and Tracy Chevalier's novels in that there is a historical mystery that needs to be solved.  Cree is digging into the history of an old Victorian Mansion in a fairly swank San Fran neighborhood after a bizarre set of bones was discovered in the basement.  Long, thin leg and arm bones, curved unnaturally; short, stubby fingers and toes; elongated skull with unusually sharp, pronounced canine teeth....you get the point.  Running parallel to this contemporary story are diary entries written by one of the original owners of the house.  The reader is the only one aware of the diary as the story goes along as Cree struggles to figure out the history behind the wolfman's bones.  Cree is in town at the behest of an old family friend, Uncle Bert, and their relationship is strained by lost contact, the passage of time and secrets that Bert isn't willing to share.  

I know I use this phrase waaaay too much but this is another novel that explores the dark places of the human soul.  I have an interest in books that closely examine this point and I will be purchasing this entire series for my own personal library.  To sum up, while Bones of the Barbary Coast really doesn't continue in the truly scary vein of the two previous books in the series, City of Masks and Land of Echoes, it is a very strong book all on it's own.  I believe the author did an excellent job of fending off my paltry attempts to figure out whodunit.  I've typed and erased several sentences to follow that one but they all give something away that I believe you'd enjoy more finding on your own so go out and find your own copy and get to it!

it's baaaaaack...

way #3 to amuse a bored cat:

I have an 11-year-old, 13-pound Siamese male, and his favorite amusement is as follows: I grab him by his rear thighs and swing him back between my legs.  Then, I swing him back up in front in a flip, catching him under each arm.  His hing legs come up and rest inside each of my elbows. There he sits, while I use his "arms" to box (a la Ali) anyone nearby.  Afterwards, a full flip dismount brings a full purr! 

D.T. and F.A., Pheonix, AZ

I have friend who's a vet and somehow (and I fully accept the possibility that I could be way off base) I think she would frown mightily on this particular "fun" activity...I would have to go the ER to be stitched back up if I tried it on the Binskster!

vote for fail!

My failblog submission is up for voting!  It is on the second page and looks like this:

more fail, owned and pwned pics and videos

Vote for my pic to be featured on their homepage!

a blatant appeal . . .

. . .to two of the great loves of my life, kittehs and ponies


BEHOLD! (I don't know what to say about the soundtrack)

Yes We Carve!

I wish I'd thought of that!

...though I do like the one I did. I'm so unimaginative sometimes *sigh* Hey, I could always buy another pumpkin!

R.I.P.ing right along!

. . . for all my ghoulish fiends friends!

If you care to, you may catch up with my first two books in the RIP III Challenge:

The Walking Dead

Land of Echoes

On to the third!  Three down, one to go!

I can't even remember which blog I found this book on, but the description hooked me (no pun intended) immediately.  Based on real accounts, Newes from the Dead by Mary Hooper is a fictionalized retelling of the horrifying not-quite-death of Anne Green in 1650.  

Anne awakens in darkness, but is not immediately afraid.  During the cold winter months, she always rises in darkness.  It is when she tries to move that she discovers something is terribly wrong.  It is also then that she remembers the last thing that had happened to her...she had been hanged for infanticide.  Was she now in heaven, hell, or something completely unknown?

Out in the cold, cold world, the medical college has just received a rare treat...the chance to disect a fresh corpse.  The young lady had been hanged only that morning and the students were all eager for a chance to learn.  One student in particular, Robert Matthews, is disturbed because the body does not look like others he has seen...it looks almost alive.  The lead doctor is finishing up his speech about the importance of what they are doing for the future of medicine when Robert sees the corpse's eyelids twitch...or did he?

D-I-S-T-U-R-B-I-N-G!  And on so many levels!  This is young adult fiction but I thought it was pretty creepy.  Not scary, but definitely creepy.  Hooper's description of the hanging and the near-disection as well as the time Anne spends in the jail at Oxford Castle read more like a book for adults than young adults.  I actually got a bit squeamish a time or two.  The author has included a reproduction of the actual pamphlet printed in 1651 describing the events leading up to Anne's hanging and what happened afterward.  

if you do nothing else tonight . . .

 . . . visit ZooBorns and get your "awwwww" in shape :)

more pumpkin paintin' at Holley's House

I know you'll find it so surprising that this is my pumpkin, since I'm all sweetness and light and such ;) The fork was T's idea but the...uh....wet work...was mine!

Oh yeah, that's the money shot! Look out Romero, here comes Night of the Living Punkin'!

This gruesome looking fellow came supplied with the Freddy Krueger slash to the face. I asked M if he'd picked that pumpkin on purpose but he promised he didn't notice it until I pointed it out! I think the mirror glass eyes really set off the whole ensemble!

You can see the slashes better from this angle. Ahhh, the scars! Ahhh, the bottomless mirror glass eyes! Ahhh, the Frida Kahlo brows! Ahhhh, the stump eye! Ahhhhhhh!


. . . and a good time was had by all.

pumpkin paintin' at Holley's House!

Z put us all to shame with her spoooooky haunted house! The bats in the sky and the enshading trees are overlooked by a waning moon adrift in the clouds...good work Z!

The bottom row represents the entirety of KT's family. From left to right: E's three eyed rainbow, Essie's arachnid-looking beastie, KT's feather-crowned beauty, P-toe's haunted veggie, and bringing up the rear is D's honorary decoration (since he was not there). I like everyone's randomly placed eyes! The sun and star pumpkin is T's and I wish you could see the flower and vine on the other side! Arrrrgh! I didn't get a pic!

Here is A's flapper girl...you can practically see her doing the Charleston! Come on, you know you can! Love the mole!

The is M's feathered friend! He looks pretty excited to be there next to the chips :) I told M he looked like Captain Harris from Police Academy. Hopefully someone, somewhere, will get that reference...come on people, don't make me feel old before my time!


continued . . .

better late than never!

so, the always venerable KT has a blogged a series of posts about what she doesn't want for Christmas...my favorite so far has been the 9000% polyester whitetail deer bedspread - HiDeOuS!  

I give you the super uncuddly Plush Microbes!  I do NOT want any of these for Christmas but you may want to get your loved one(s) a cute little mange microbe?  Maybe some stomach ulcer or E. coli?  Oooh, the herpes is cute!

soooooo . . .

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could I interest you in a muffin?

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or some fresh squeezed orange juice perhaps?

I just put this on the hold shelf for a patron.

that is all.

redecorating..on a small scale

Completely disregarding the fact that my furniture is covered in sheets (I love Binky, but her furry presence is very apparent and I just cleaned), I forgot to lower the blinds on one window, and the lense of my camera needs to be cleaned, check out my spic-n-span living room! I moved The Lady, who used to hang over the couch, to the opposite wall, which you'll see in the next photo, and my newest purchase now hangs in its place. I haven't decided what to call it yet, but I saw it at the The Foundry yesterday and HaD tO hAvE iT! It is dated 1976 and I SO believe it. It has one fairly long scratch but it doesn't bother me, I have a few scars myself and I'm only a year younger :)

As you can see, The Lady is now keeping my television company. Here's as good of a closeup as I could get without glare from the glass.

My brother, the deceased one as opposed to my half brother, drew The Lady when he was in junior high, pretty good eh? Eddie was severly colorblind so charcoal was his medium of choice since it didn't matter what color anything was supposed to be. This is the only work we have that I know of. It just brings home the fact that he was only 19 when he died, I'm sure he thought he had all the time in the world to draw.

And here it is! Still Life with Flowers? Jugs and Oranges? Butterflies and Jars? I don't know what to call it, but something will come to me I'm sure. It looks really good against the cedar paneled wall, IMHO.

toooo funny!

I watched all 68 seconds of this and laughed the entire time...what a great puppydawg, just so happy!

are you truly alone? *bwahahaha!*

For the merry few who visit the House with differing levels of frequency, you may remember that I signed up for the RIP III Reading Challenge.  I finished my first book of the challenge, shamefully, about a month ago, the epic graphic (ha, ha!) novel The Walking Dead.  It was exssssselent!

So, in record time (I finished it in two days!!!) I'm cranking out the next and am halfway through with the third but let's leave that for later.

It was about 2 years ago or so that I was browsing my way through the library's downloadable audio collection and I came across a not-so-little book called City of Masks by Daniel Hecht.  A haunted house in New Orleans' Garden Distict?  SIGN ME UP!  Let me tell you, gentle readers, it wasn't long before I was driving down the interstate at about 45 mph in another world.  Unfortunately for me, Mrs. Roomie was out of town at the time and I had forgotten to leave any lights on in or outside of the house.  I sat in my car for about 20 minutes trying to get over the image I had in my mind of turning into the kitchen and seeing a pair a shoes and a snout try to scooch themselves back into the corner on the other side of the kitchen...it was a near thing.  So, needless to say that I urge this book on all of the patrons I know who enjoy a frightening little tale.  

Land of Echoes is the second book in this series featuring paranormal psychologist Cree Black and I LuRvEd iT!  It wasn't quite as scary overall as CoM but it had it's moments.  I did have to have Two Weeks Notice playing in the background while I read to try and tamp down most of the fantods I got from this book.  

EEEEK!  So, CoM was a haunted house thriller and LoE is a tale of possession on the Navajo reservation in the lonely, flat, desolate desert of New Mexico.  Cree is called out to a school for gifted Native American students because a 15 year old boy is suffering from bizaare, violent, agonizing seizures with not apparent physical cause.  He no longer feels or recognizes his right arm, instead identifying his arm near his spine and his shoulder on his neck.  When in the grip of the seizure, his eyes, arms, and lungs act independent from one another and he becomes violent. The woman who started the school, Julieta, has her own reasons for wanting the young boy well, but she knows if word got out about the boys symptoms that the people's innate superstition would soon cause the school to go under.  Cree is under the gun with little information and suspicious school employees snooping around.  

I think it is the surrounding desert that plays just as much a part in making this book scary as much as the boy's horrific symptoms.  The stark terrain, jagged skylines, and arrid conditions lend to a feeling of abandonment and isolation that soon becomes almost unbearable.  On the other hand, I'm now going to HAVE to get a book on the Navajo Indians.  I don't know how they felt about their portrayal in Hecht's work, but I am FaScInAtEd!  

I used to think this commercial was stupid, but after reading this book, it's not a little unsettling...read it for yourself to find out why!

Verizon - Sleeping - Watch more amazing videos here

sometimes . . .

. . . I do wish I lived in a bit more of a progressive town, ya know?  I love living in a rural area except for some of the...um.....rural people.  

Seattle's Dunshee House is hosting a citywide book discussion series called the Seattle Gay and Lesbian Book Club.  I thought at first that this was something organized by the Seattle Public Library but it is getting off the ground through the good work being done by the Dunshee House.  I'm sure SPL and the other community partnerships they are working for will come through for them but, as far as I'm concerned, this is the work that librarians should be particularly focused on, underserved populations!  

I am not gay so I can't speak to exactly what they go through in day to day life, but I have gay friends and I've heard their stories. Especially around here, the social outlets are few and far between.  When I say that, I'm not sure how to express what I truly mean by that statement but it would be something along the lines of there not being a ton of places where they can go, truly relax and be themselves without the censure, voiced or unvoiced, of others.  I'm a big girl, I know what it feels like to be stared at in fascination (and not in a nice way I assure you).

So, all that to say "Way to go Seattle!"

I just submitted this to failblog.org!

I bought it at Publix on Friday afternoon

moar funny pictures

I still don't like, or understand, chemistry...

but I am real damn amused

:)

:)

:)

just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

I proudly bring you another entry from 187 Ways To Amuse a Bored Cat, now with bonus commentary!

#155 - Sock Toys

A very simple, inexpensive plaything for kittens and cats is a child's white kneesock lightly stuffed with either waxed paper or the crinkly cellophane wrappers of cigarette packs [cause that's how I roll and I want my beloved to inhale some sort of toxic BPA/nicotine residue mix].  Tie the sock closed with a bit of yarn [it's a kneesock, tie a knot in it].  The toy is lightweight and makes noise. Kittens throw it in the air, jump on it, and attack it.  It cannot harm them [except for the toxic BPA/nicotine residue mix], and it can be emptied and washed.

A.L.S., Englishtown, NJ

Okay, my ribbing aside, this is actually a pretty good idea.  One of Bink's favorites is something that acts just like it but costed much more than sock and a pack of cigs.  I kid.  I think I'll get a sock from the pile of book-residue covered laundry [which is still just as you saw it in the picture from an earlier post] and put some Wal-mart sacks in it.  They didn't actually come from Wal-mart, that's just what we call them.  Similarly, I might be caught asking you what kind of Coke you want rather than asking your soft drink preferences.  It's what many of us do here in Alabama, get over it.

So, it's nearly 11:30pm and I'm drinking decaf coffee and eating rice.  It feels like a weekend night and that sounds pretty good up until the point when my alarm goes off at 6am tomorrow morning (which is getting closer and closer btw).  I'll be glad when daylight savings ends (begins?), when we fall back an hour anyway.  I don't like getting up in the dark as it just makes everything harder than it should be.  Binky thinks I'm straight nut crazy as well as she is currently in my room moaning like a lion on the Serengeti.  In Binky-speak that means it's bedtime and my dumb @$$ just doesn't get it.

Okay Binky, okay!  I wish ya'll could hear this, she's so bossy.

night, ya'll!

no stone unturned...

or perhaps it should be no grave left undisturbed...

as Cinematical blogger Elisabeth Rappe points out, Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula, has an ending and a pretty definitive one at that.  She reports, however, that Stoker's great-grandnephew (Dacre Stoker....okay, that sounds sexy!)  has been authorized by the Stoker estate to write a sequel to be called Dracula: The Undead, based on characters and plots edited out of Bram's version, which will then be adapted into a feature film.  Dacre, sexy or not, I really feel is messing with something that needs no further interpretation but who am I to judge?  If you've read Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, you'll know what I mean :)  Anyway, I'm not a big fan of sequels to anything at all.  

What do ya'll think?

del Torro dirt

The Hobbit is coming along!  In fact, del Torro is pretty excited about it.  He had this to say, "Believe me, I am jumping up-and-down inside this fat body!"

You have to respect that kind of excitment, you just gotta.

Also, he seems to definitely be working on an adaptation of Frankenstein.  He did say he was not doing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but rather an adventure story with that character.  I say he could have ol' Franky participating in a sack race with Jason at Crystal Lake and I'd still watch it!

O.......M.......G ! ! !

Thanks for the heads-up, KT!

Checkout Jay Walker's personal library!  (I know, it's an unfortunate name, but with this much money who cares?)

Seriously, I'm salivating RiGhT nOw!

I would give both ovaries for a set-up like this in my house....hell, half of it even...

Right now all I have are purple plastic tubs from Dollar General.  Never have they seemed as white-redneck-trash as they do at this particular moment.

new ink!

So Thursday I got a new tattoo...

So I am fundamentally unable to be frugal, sue me...I'm expressing support for the local economy.

Anyway, I put the following quote (Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus) on the inside of my left forearm:

Come, and take choice of all my library

And so beguile thy sorrow...

It is in a Shakespeare-ish font that I downloaded from dafont.com and it makes me v.v. happy :)  As soon as it heals up I'll take some good photos.  I should have taken one right after I got it, but now it's starting to heal and is somewhat...I hate to say scabby, but there it is.  When this little period of time is over, I'll display it here for you :)

that is all.

I bought this from Anne-Julie Aubry

for your consideration

Carl over at Stainless Steel Droppings has posted an interview with French artist Anne-Julie Aubry that you should definitely check out.  (I know KT is going to love the art and Erica as well!)  SSD is the site through which I participate in the RIP Challenge III (which I've got to get mOvInG on!).  There are all sorts of creepy things going on over there so don't miss out!  Visit Anne-Julie Aubry's Etsy site and get some of her art for yourself!  I can see some on my walls right now :)

T! This puppy looks kinda like Bella!

Plus I could SO see this happening with her :)

another cute kitteh

This is not my kitteh, but I distinctly remember her doing stuff like this when she was a youngster :)