Monkey Thoughts

Enjoy.

Last November, I did not see any of the After Dark Horrorfest movies in the theatre. Partly because I forgot (hey, it was peak season at work) and partly because I had no desire to spend the money on a ticket. Thank god for Netflix though. I've placed all eight movies in my queue, which allows me to indulge without feeling bad for spending money should the movie inevitably suck.
On a related/unrelated note, I will take this moment to state that the prior Horrorfest woman was way more hot than the blonde woman that's on there now. And I am completely comfortable in my sexuality to be able to point that out.

First on the list was Borderland. No real reason why, it just seemed like a good one to start with. To state it simply, I am a little tired of the "people go to [fill in the blank] to indulge in [sex/drugs/drinking]" set up in movies. But hey, I guess it is a formula that works.
We get that same setup in Borderland because apparently there are not enough drunk women in the US that men can sex up, and Mexico seems to be the logical place to get some. We have our three men stereotypes for this sort of set up: the "innocent" guy who you really want to find happiness, the jackass who has no regard for anything but himself, and the anti-hero who just barely passes as likable with his aloof charm. One of them ends up getting jacked by some Satan-worshiping cult members who, oddly enough, are in need of a human sacrifice. (Talk about timing, huh?) This means in the movie world that the remaining two must search out their friend despite the risks.

(Just an fyi to folks I know- should any of you suddenly go missing in a foreign country and there's a definite air of weirdness going on, I just want you to know that I will deal with it from the safety of my own country. Not to be selfish or anything, but I don't want the crazies coming after me as well.)

Gore-wise, the movie did not disappoint (assuming you are into such things). I had to look away several times cause there were some things with eyeballs that I just cannot deal with. Despite how closely to formula this movie followed, it was a good creepy film. It freaked me out on so many levels. Plus, it was a good (albeit small) role for Sean Astin as a creepy cult dude.
3 out of 5 nanas.

...that the sanity level in the human race gets lower and lower.

You know, I will be the first to admit that I don't "get" a lot of performance art. I suppose my brain functions on a more logic-geared blueprint than is required for such art. I'd like to say it's because I outgrew that stage in my life where I looked for deep meaning and hidden subtext in such things, but honestly I don't think I ever was in that stage. I blame it all on the drugs I didn't take. It's not that I don't think it's good to spark conversations or force people to look beyond the status quo; I'm all about that. Does smearing feces on a painting urge me "to move beyond the superficial material plane to a higher level of spiritual contemplation"? Uh...not really. In fact, it makes me think "Damn. If that's all it takes to get some sort of fame...why didn't I think of that?" It also makes me wonder both where the 'artist' procured said dung, and whether or not he wore gloves while handling it. (I really am no fun for these artists.)
So I'm not really surprised that the latest controversy-inducing artist to pop out on the scene decided to raise the bar in terms of "how can I possibly disgust people even more", as the elephant dung, while getting some people's knickers in a twist, was fleeting. And if you're going to be a fame whore, by all means BE a fame whore. That leads us to our latest story . Add one woman, donor sperm, a turkey baster, and herbal abortifacient into a large bowl. Mix well. Film the alleged abortions, splatter the results on some sheets, and call that mess "art". Garnish with a dose of "this is supposed to evoke a dialog on a woman's body and its roll" for added zest.
I answer this with a "um...do what now?" This doesn't anger me or make me scream about the morality of the project. I am just wondering why is it when someone in an art program or with a school backing them or the right sponsors gets her period all over a bed sheet and hangs it up, it is considered "art" but if a regular ol' person such as myself did that, no one would be pondering on the function of my uterus or engaging in a dialog about women's roles in life? Instead, people would think I was completely out of my mind. If a regular ol' person tied a up a dog and let it starve to death slowly, no one would be examining it for a statement against animal cruelty; instead, the person would be hauled off and charged.
It baffles me. It really baffles me. I'm not sure why there is a degree of allowance with these things when done under the pretense of art, or even if there should be. Like I said, maybe I'm not designed to understand such things. Perhaps I'm not hip enough to believe that every bodily function could pass as an artistic expression. I suppose on one hand, these artists were successful. They've disgusted people into speaking about their actions and managed to gain their 15 mins of fame, whether positive or negative. Let's have a dialog on that.
And then after that, let's discuss how unbelievably nasty it is to put your bodily fluids on display for the world to see. I mean, come on now.

(And is it me, or does 'let me bleed all over the place and film it" chick look an awful lot like Elizabeth Peña? It's eerie.)

I've decided that Emily enjoys depressing me with Myspace posts of dogs in need of adoption and fostering, all of which I feel really helpless in saving. But one of her posts today really struck me, and I felt the need to get it out there in case anyone browsing by can help.

Meet Sniffles:

The little dude was born without a nose and has some teeth missing. He's located in a Georgia shelter and the vet says he's happy and healthy. He's in need of a foster home (and I would assume a nice loving forever home).
There's something so freaking adorable about him, though he reminds me of the Predator without his mask (it's the under-bite). That just makes him all the more awesome to me.
I don't have any other info on him, but you can contact Heather via heatherkballance at yahoo dot com if there's any way you can help.

This is all kinds of awesome:

PS- The best Muppet movie was The Great Muppet Caper, hands down.

The problem with being a cat owner is that they don't really make a lot of cutesy outfits to dress your cat up with. There's a reason for that...it's because cats don't like to put up with that kind of shenanigans.
I did happen to come across some 'hats' designed for cats and I had to get them. It was a totally useless impulse buy- seriously, what do I NEED cat hats for?
This is what happens when I put these adorable hats on my unsuspecting cats:

Pez, with a lion hat, really trying to pretend I'm not there



Sake, with a giraffe hat, plotting out my destruction

Much thanks to Scooooot, I had the opportunity to go to HorrorHound Weekend this past Friday. If you're not in the horror/nerd circuit, this is a nice little convention with a good list of actors and other folks in the movie biz and a lot o' vendors. Scoot won some passes courtesy of the fine folks at the Night Of The Living Podcast and of course he had to take me cause I kick all the asses in the world. That's right.
I had big plans for HorrorHound. I was going to meet Tom Savini and get his autograph and maybe meet all these other people. I was excited. I was ready to go.
Then I got there. And saw Mr. Tom Savini sitting there at his table. And you know what? I could merely tiptoe in an awkward dance around his presence. I seriously got so nervous, I couldn't make eye contact, let alone speak with him. It occurred to me 'What could I, a mere lowly mortal, possibly have to say to the likes of Tom Savini?' There was nothing I could come up with that wouldn't reek of lameness, not even "omg, I am such a big fan of your work" cause I'm sure that was coming out of everyone's mouth. I approached his table several times, but just couldn't get my nerve up enough to say anything.
Then there was Dante...er...Brian O'Halloran. Just sitting there...hanging out. Scoot finally got me to go up there and very nicely spoke up for my chicken self, thus resulting in a pic of me and Brian. Good stuff. While we were waiting for our turn, Scoot nudges me and says "It's Danny Trejo!" I scoffed, knowing full well Danny Trejo was not scheduled until Satur...omg it's Danny f***ing Trejo! Scoot insisted on walking up to get his picture taken with Danny, despite my desperate pleas of "Don't do it! I've seen him in movies! He can totally kick your ass!" I'm happy to say Scoot got his picture and did not get an ass kicking.
I will never live down the fact that I was scared to talk to people who purposely showed up to a convention for autographs and fan pictures, but hey, it's just one of the many things that make me the nutcase that I am.

I did get a sweet pic of Bill Mosley, Danny Trejo, and Tom Savini:

Booya!

Sure, a New Kids on the Block reunion is unintentionally funny to think about. But I would be lying if it didn't make me giggle with girlish delight. I did, after all, dedicate a good portion of my early adolescence to collection Teen Bop posters and buttons and t-shirts all smothered with the face of Joe McIntyre. (He was way cuter than Jordan, no lies.) I remember that fateful day when I decided I would like them. Seriously, I decided to like them. All the girls at school and my best friends were on their way to becoming groupies while I absolutely detested the band. Feeling a bit more socially awkward than usual, as is the case when you're a tall, brainy 12 year old with glasses, carrying around so-called 'baby fat' and a bad spiral perm, I decided to give into peer pressure and force myself to like them. And sure enough, when I did, I ended up with more than one female friend that year. Yes, 6th grade was a great year. Then 7th sucked. And in 8th, I ended up befriending a bully that I had to deal with for the entire elementary school run and we found out that neither one of us sucked as bad as we thought each other did. In fact, we even had a nice hug at our 'graduation' as we were going to different high schools. Sigh. Memories. High school kicked some ass though. That's right, I actually enjoyed high school. Considering I had put up with bullshit for 8 years of my life, I think I was entitled to enjoying myself. I give credit to the track system my high school had, so I was no longer the 'smart girl', but a regular girl in classes with other equally smart people. Emily will totally rat me out and bring up the point that when they highlighted the "top 6%" at our graduation, I was rank 11 out of the top 11. The dumbest of the smartest. HA! There is a small part of me that thinks they made it top 6% and not top 5% just because they liked me and felt sorry for me.

This has nothing to do with the fact that NKOTB is reuniting and I would like to take this opportunity to inform my husband that should they tour and come this way, we will TOTALLY be going. MUHAHAHA!

For the memories:

This

Recently, I downloaded the Opera browser to take it for a spin. This was following my disappointment in the Safari for Windows trial a week or so ago (sadly not impressed at all). There are a few things I like about Opera, and a few things I'm missing from Firefox (mainly add ons), but a strong feature I've grown fondly of in Opera are the little widgets. There's useful stuff like a weather widget, and completely non-useful-but-pretty widgets like the lava lamp. The one I really really like is the Sim Aquarium. It's a little tank that you have to 'care for' - feed the fish, watch the water pollution, give the fish meds if they get ill. The other night, I had a moment with my Sim Aquarium that reminded me of a traumatic childhood experience. You see, I had always had fish growing up. I'm not sure what the attraction was there, but I just loved having pet fish. However, my luck with fish was just non-existent. With the first fish I got, I knelt down in my bedroom, staring at my new pet with amazement and glee. Around that very second, my youngest brother, who was in his toddler years, came walking up and managed to trip over my feet. This sent him flying forward where he subsequently cracked his head on the corner of my wooden dresser. Panicked, I ran to tell my mom what happened. After shouting up the stairs to her, I turned back around to see my brother walking up behind me, his hand smearing the massive amount of blood pouring from the gash on his forehead. That image was burned in my skull forever. Up till that point, I had no idea that head wounds bled so profusely.
But I digress from the truly traumatic fish experience I've recreated with the Sim Aquarium. At one point in my childhood, I had gotten a rather nice aquarium. I went to pick out some fish and settled on some orange and black type. The clerk asked me if I wanted 2 boys and 2 girls. This seemed like a logical set-up to me, as I was clearly not thinking of the consequences of such an action. A few weeks passed until one day, as I was peering into the aquarium, I noticed teeny tiny living things in the aquarium with my four fish. I peered closer, initially thinking it was some kind of disgusting issue that I would need to clean out the tank for. I quickly realized that what I was looking at were baby fish. It was really cool at first, but soon there were more babies, and more babies, and my 10 gallon tank was suddenly home to about 40 fish. Let me tell you, the impact 40 fish has on a simple task of cleaning the fish tank is really quite tremendous. Around this time, our family vacation began to sneak up on us. Being responsible fish owners, my mom purchased an automatic feeder for the aquarium to assure that the massive army of fish living in my bedroom were well taken care of for that week and some days of our absence. Everything was hooked up, and I was feeling confident. We left for our vacation and I didn't give it another thought. Then at some point, one of my parents decided to joke- "Wouldn't it be funny if we came home and all the fish were dead?" I'm not sure why this would be funny in retrospect, but this was no doubt what literary folks would term "dramatic irony". You see, as we returned from the trip and walked inside the house, we were met with a very sickening smell. I approached my room with a sense of dread, already knowing what I would find. Sure enough, there was an aquarium full of dead fish. At some point in the trip, the feeder had malfunctioned. The water became increasingly polluted and there was no food coming in. If you've never smelled a large vat of polluted fish water with 40 fish corpses floating about in it, consider yourself lucky. It is a vomit-inducing stench, no doubt. To this day, I still blame it on my parents for cracking the joke and dooming my fish.
And back to the Sim Aquarium. I have this horrible tendency to forget I have it running. The first night I used it, I got distracted doing other things. By the time I clicked back to the screen, my two fish had multiplied into twenty. Once again, I forgot about the program. I clicked back over in time to see that the water was polluted and my fish were dying off. I didn't learn my lesson, and forgot again. All in all, I managed to kill off a couple hundred simulated fish last night alone. As I was speaking to my mom, I mentioned 'Remember that time you guys laughed about my fish being dead and then when we came back they were? This is JUST LIKE THAT."
I am clearly not meant to own any sort of fish, real or simulated.

I've seen this story making the rounds on the internet, and I figured I'd weigh in too.
Basically, a 72-yr old man in Kansas was convicted of 'aggravated indecent solicitation of a child'. Part of his sentence was that he needed to post signs on his house and car identifying himself as a sex offender. Now a few years ago, I would have been like 'you're goddamn right, but this isn't nearly harsh enough', but I seemed to have shaken my vigilante-esque attitude of late that encompassed the belief of removing body parts off of offenders. I guess I began to understand that such an action, aside from being completely insane and barbaric, would not really accomplish much especially since the core of the problem does not stem from a couple of nads, but from the mental aspects. This punishment just seems..off. As I've seen other people mention, if the man is truly a danger and the judge feels people need to be warned, then lock the dude up. If not, there is no point in doing this unless the intended result was to stir up some true vigilante nuts and have them harass the guy. It's a difficult issue to be looking at, especially as a parent. I cannot honestly say that if someone harmed so much a hair on my kids' head that I wouldn't go utterly ballistic and unleash some raw animalistic maternal ass-kicking to reciprocate, because I know I would lose it completely. (I am the person that called my son's first soccer coach's wife a rather unpleasant name because she was getting a little too close to my son with her car, but in my defense I did not realize it was the coach's wife. Had I known, I would have chosen a much less controversial insult to toss her way completely behaved myself. Yeah. He didn't rejoin that team the next season. Too awkward.) I suppose it's quite easy to allow ourselves to dismiss those deemed unfit for society , dehumanize them and condemn them to a sub-standard lifestyle, but there is just something in my gut that tells me this accomplishes nothing in the long run for our society. I certainly don't want to seem like I'm sympathizing here with the 'bad guys', as I cannot possibly understand what would make a person think it was okay to do something of a sexual nature to someone who's not anywhere near sexual maturity in the physical sense. I just don't feel like this was the most effective sentence the judge could have come up with. It'll be interesting to see if it holds up.