Ablogalypse Now

Dave's very short review of "The Mist"

With the notable exception of a well-executed drugstore sequence - shitty casting, subpar acting and production design, and a miserably botched ending turned one of Stephen King's best short stories into a mostly unsatisfying train wreck of a movie. So-so creature effects from Nicotero & Co. but not nearly enough to save this flick from a grade of C-minus at best.

ok...i have admittedly been quite harsh, perhaps moreso than is warranted. maybe i'll change my mind after a few months when the dvd comes out. i should have mentioned that this wasn't exactly what i would call a pristine viewing experience. it was a free advance screening and as such i found myself in a situation not unlike a worse than average day at the department of motor vehicles magnified by a factor of 10 or 20. i kept thinking of the hit tv show "ow! my balls!" featured in mike judge's "idiocracy." i don't give a shit if it's free, i'm never going to another one of those fucking things again.

dream 11.20.07

i was at loch ness, or some other big scottish loch, and had apparently been hired on to help with some kind of historic archaeology/restoration/preservation project. it was warm, the surroundings were lush, and i was going to be traveling to and from work on the back of a huge whale while facing backward. i remember my boss telling me to just close my eyes and allow the sensation to wash over me like some sort of meditation. was there a point in this? something about facing backward and not forward? was the big whale-creature a metaphor for life? was the dream telling me to relax, go with it and watch the past slowly recede into the distance? or, is my subconscious trying to tell me that i'm still spending too much time dwelling on the past rather than the present or future? i don't remember what i was going to be doing, only that for part of the dream i was in an academic setting working in some kind of art studio with different lumps of wet clay. one was very flexible, pliant, soft & pleasing to work with while the other was quite stiff and dry and harder to work with. i remember geting up out of my seat to go and get some water to soften up the dry clay and being chastised for it, like i was undisciplined or something. i remember the school seemed old, and it had pictures of the blues brothers and hst taped to the walls. i remember having to find a bathroom and pissing while someone watched me, then turning around and pissing all over the floor.the teacher that chewed me out was eccentric, flirting with my female classmates, and he wound up being the guy who hired me for what was to be a 2 year project. but i have no recollection of what the work was going to involve. only that it was on or near a lake, and that i was going to be living with a dog in a tiny cottage near the lake when i wasn't working on this project. and what the fuck was paul doing in my dream of all people? i haven't seen or talked to him in well over a year. i got the strange feeling that the work was going to be connected to other arch. work i've done in the past but for the life of me i just can't remember. maybe i dreamt that too. what was the central theme of the dream? was there one? what did the clay signify? being creative and working with my hands? why was one lump of clay soft and the other dry? is my subconscious telling me to go back into archaeology? or was this all just an outgrowth of having seen the trailer for that new movie, "the water horse" last night? that's funny, because my dreams could very easily have been about all the fiendishly bizarre lovecraftian creatures from "the mist" - but the tone and texture of the dream seems to have been inspired almost entirely by a trailer that ran for less than 5 minutes. regardless, i woke up feeling great, very rested and refreshed, and with the vague sense, founded or not, that something truly momentous is close at hand.

take off, to the great white north...

it's not only a beauty way to go, but according to james lovelock and a host of others, it appears to be the only way to go if the human race is going to survive...fuck your hybrid car, fuck green living, fuck recycling, sustainable development, and reducing our individual carbon footprints - we're all collectively fucked....global warming and catastrophic global environmental change are here to stay, and shit is going to get really fucking ugly far sooner than most people think...

At the age of eighty-eight, after four children and a long and respected career as one of the twentieth century's most influential scientists, James Lovelock has come to an unsettling conclusion: The human race is doomed. "I wish I could be more hopeful," he tells me one sunny morning as we walk through a park in Oslo, where he is giving a talk at a university. Lovelock is a small man, unfailingly polite, with white hair and round, owlish glasses. His step is jaunty, his mind lively, his manner anything but gloomy. In fact, the coming of the Four Horsemen -- war, famine, pestilence and death -- seems to perk him up. "It will be a dark time," Lovelock admits. "But for those who survive, I suspect it will be rather exciting." 

- read the rest here

...fuck me freddy, it looks like i picked the wrong century to stop smoking dope...

Dave's thumbnail review of "Zodiac"

Watching David Fincher's latest was like watching a 3 motherfucking hour episode of Cold Case Files, and I hate that fucking show so, in other words, it was a huge letdown - the biggest disappointment of the goddamned year aside from Danny Boyle's "Sunshine".

confessions of a recovering rage-oholic

it's hard to believe i am just a handful shy of 1,000 posts for this blog.

1,000 nuggets of gibberish churned out over nearly 4 years. what's even more amazing is the shift in tone from the early days until now.

looking back, my posts were almost entirely bitterly vitriolic screeds of some sort or another. random troll-baiting was a goddamned art form.

but not anymore...i'm not sure when it stopped altogether, probably sometime around my divorce. in hindsight, perhaps all the bile and anger in my posts was somehow connected to all the repressed emotion i felt during my relationship.

maybe there was some connection, but i think most of it was inspired by the ongoing nightmare that is the bush administration.

they say that a lack of outrage in today's world is indicative of a lack of attention. and while there may be some truth to that statement, i fail to see how sustained outrage is anything but a one-way ticket to a spontaneous brain hemorrhage.

in the early days i naively thought that blogging could somehow make a difference, that one pissed off blogger could somehow become a community of pissed off bloggers, and that those pissed off bloggers would in turn become pissed off voters, and they did, but then the bush regime showed us that it really doesn't matter how many pissed off people go to the polls when you can just steal not one, but two motherfucking elections...

so, i really don't think blogging can change things anymore. if i've learned anything from all this it's that: a) it doesn't matter how profound you are, or think you are, nobody gives a shit what you have to say, b) in general, people care more about the trivial and absurd, and c) there are an awful lot of people out there with a shit-ton of credit card debt.

so now it's all about trying to find a kinder, gentler version of the madman that i was, and still am, somewhere deep inside. and about trying to find a way - without god, drugs, therapy, or 12-step groups - to enjoy what remains of my my life in an age of endless war, stolen elections, unparalleled government corruption and hubris, technological change, catastrophic environmental degradation, and widespread public apathy. and maybe, just maybe, to find someone to get a few kicks with while we sit back and watch the american shithouse go up in flames.

a tough row to hoe...but i've got to try....

6,570...

...plus or minus a couple hundred, is, according to my calculations, roughly the number of days of my life that I spent stoned and/or drunk, or in some other state of severe chemical derangement...how I managed to navigate those years without maiming and/or killing myself or someone else is beyond my comprehension...

notes on my death

I could feel my mother's tears over the phone as I led her down a path she never wanted to revisit again. To watch in mute horror as her son revisited the sins of his father. She told me that I'd kill myself, that the guilt would tear me apart. And although at the time I scoffed at her words, in time she was proven right. But not the way she imagined. I chose death. Or perhaps death chose me. But it was not the easy sort of death that involved a gun, pills, slit wrists, or crashed cars. My death was agonizingly slow and painful, something I lived from sunup to sundown over a period of days I can't even begin to recall. I don't even remember the point at which I realized I was dead. But the Me that I was then, the Me that habitually sought approval without instead of within, the Me that knew only darkness, excess, rage and rebellion, the Me that chose Numbness instead of Life, the Me that thought that I could conjure my muse with alcohol, drugs and the prolonged derangement of the senses, the Me that allowed my Shadow to dominate no less than 18 years of my existence - was dead. Having emptied myself of these crippling illusions, I must now refill the vessel that is Me with something more….

massive new clive barker interview

barker has been, and continues to be my favorite fiction writer of all time...fuck eli roth AND rob zombie, barker is still the undisputed master of the horror genre.

click here for the interview.

mi corazon y el rillito

like life -
it goes on
one cuts through the heart of the city,
the other just cuts through the heart

sometimes it's a flood,
sometimes a trickle,
and other times seemingly dry as a bone

but the water is always there
sometimes you've just got to dirty your hands
and dig deep beneath the surface to reach it

the captive muse

not until i have:
more money
more time
  more space
   more ideas
    more focus
     more clarity
      more support
       more courage
more love

and:
less clutter
less distraction
  less stress
   less self-doubt
    less anxiety
     less pain
less fear

- always more of this,
or less of that...

excuses, all...

crippled, bound and gagged,
my muse stares at me

watching and waiting,
with eyes that say,

"if not now, when?"