Via VideoSift, a mashup of one of my favorite classic rock songs (I prefer the super extended versions) and classic Hammer horror:

If this doesn’t get you in the mood for Halloween, I don’t know what will!

Via Rue Morgue, a stop-motion silent film and bloodbath.

And, via jwz, another good installment in the series:

Via VideoSift, an examination of childhood psychosis and the transient nature of friendship:

Via Neatorama, the most awesomest training video EVAR. Seriously.

“One doesn’t even need to be handy in order to fix this.”
Oh, yeah!!! Shit just got real!!!!

I find it amazing that there exist places in the world where media like this is considered valid instructional technique.

I wish I lived in such a place.

Via jwz, another freakishly surreal and spooky video:

This video is full of win: art, horror, animation, and cats. <3

Via The Presurfer

Previously, The Great Pumpkin cometh. Now, via ectomo, witness an even more maddeningly wonderful eldritch tale of childhood wholesome holiday specials gone horrific: The Great Old Pumpkin.

This quest led me into mouldering libraries, cramped basement antiquaries, far-flung correspondences, and, on one occasion, frightening and persistent telephone conversations with a lunatic in Boston. The last raised alarms in my family. I promised them I would turn away from my studies, all the while resolving to continue them in secret. I committed everything I knew to memory, burned all my papers, and embroidered my most unfathomable and precious secrets in near-invisible thread on my security blanket, which as you can see, I carry still.

My continued investigations led me to certain grim texts detailing eldritch and macabre sincerities—chants, autosacrifice, sinister configurations of pumpkins—which would bait the Great Old Pumpkin to my patch. On the Hallowmas Eve of two years ago, my investigations bore fruit, so to speak. I believe that I saw him—orange, flaming, and magnificent, hovering above me for an instant and then vanishing skyward into the constellations.

I can’t believe this has been around for years, and I’m just discovering it now.

You will almost certainly enjoy this more if you are cool enough to have previously read some Lovecraft, specifically, the Call of Cthulhu. Since it’s available for free online, why don’t you do that now?

I suppose that it’s equally important to have seen this at some point in the last decade. I suppose.

I really should start watching some TV, at least for stuff like Robot Chicken.

Via YesButNoButYes:

I do not like Brian Keene.

I read his first zombie novel, The Rising, after reading good things about it on the Internet. I hated it. The thing I remember most about it was how repetitive everything in it was- either that, or how stupid all the characters were. I don’t mean normal genre stupid here, I mean characters who are completely incapable of realizing that the speaking undead are capable of reasoning, planning, or being led, despite them spewing exposition and outsmarting the living all over the place. The idea of the dead being reanimated by demons as a way to get them out of hell (I think it was something like that) was new (to me at least), but the execution was excruciating.

Anyway, I was ready to ignore Brian Keene forevermore after that, but then I was at Fangoria, and so was he, and there was a boring time in the schedule and I had time to kill, so I decided to sit through his panel. And I got to know Mr. Keene a bit better, and I got to liking him a lot less. I know he’s apparently horror fiction’s golden child (bleaaargggh), and that everyone is calling him the next Stephen King (gah!) but that is no excuse for metaphorically strutting about so during the panel. The only enlightening datum I got from him was when he responded to a question saying something along the lines of “I don’t read my own work- once I write it, I’m done with it and the first draft is basically what you get.”. That’s a paraphrase, but I don’t think it’s too far removed from the actual statement. Anyway, I appreciated that because it explained a lot- mostly, how a book can start with an interesting concept but end up with such terrible, repetitive, and sometimes inconsistent execution - it’s basically like a train of thought, or an idea. Which actually means that his stuff is pretty good, for what it is. It just isn’t much of anything.

Carrying on. Sometime after that, Matt Staggs posted a review of Keene’s new book, Dead Sea, in his blog. After reading that, specifically the part where Staggs said, “I was one of a handful of people who didn’t like Keene’s ‘The Rising’”, I decided that the thing might have potential afterall, so figured I’d give Keene another shot.

Note the difference in subject matter between the covers of the two novels- I think that really gives one a feeling of the kind of thought and originality that goes into all of Keene’s writing.

Anyway, suffice to say, ‘Dead Sea’ is a better read than ‘The Rising’. The characters are significantly less stupid, but the writing isn’t; and I’m just not the type of person who can gloss over stuff like that. If you want to turn in first drafts to the publisher that’s your own lookout, but don’t publishers usually hire editors to take care of glaring inconsistencies?

Here are a few examples:

• Toothbrush
  Page 105: “Mitch had a tube of toothpaste in his backpack.”
  Page 125: “‘You stayed here during the collapse?’ Murphy, the man who’d lent us toothpaste earlier, asked.’
• Gore
  Page 249: “He’d apparently died in his sleep, even as Hamelin’s Revenge coursed through his veins. His mouth was crusted with blood and he clutched a half-eaten heart…”
  Page 250, two paragraphs later: “<He> immediately stopped his attack and greedily devoured it, dropping the intestine and using both hands…”

I know, I know- nit-picking. But when you are actually paying attention to the details of a story and it starts spouting inconsistencies at you, it really knocks you out of it and makes it hard to get back into things. That’s what it did to me, anyway, and I wasn’t looking for errors- I wonder how many I would have found if I were actually trying to perform an editor’s job?

As to the actual content of the story- it’s nothing new. In my opinion David Wellington covered undead animals much more effectively a few years back, in Monster Island; and I felt the expository meta-fiction (as Staggs referred to the Professor’s dialog) just came off as being rather self-important. And while people seem to appreciate Keene’s use of a hero who is not only black but also gay, I don’t see it as actually adding anything to the story; instead it just seemed to reinforce stereotypes. I’d actually like to know what people from either demographic think of the characterization, but then they’d have to read the book and I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone.

I remember spending one hot summer afternoon in my formulative middle school years lazing about on the couch reading Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew. Of all the short tales featured, most enjoyable to me was the not-so-short The Mist. To this day it’s remained one of my favorite tales of fiction of all time.

Thus, it should really be no surprise that I’m waiting with baited breath for the theatrical adaptation, due out this November. Even better, the adaptation is written and directed by Frank Darabont, meaning The Mist will likely be handled as well as his other King adaptations, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption.

The trailer certainly supports this possibility:

Of course, the subject matter is vastly different than his other King adaptations, but I think that things look promising :)