"It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness."
--H.P. Lovecraft

Good morning all. Thanks to all of you who commented or emailed condolences to me last week on the death of my parents. Looks like it's going to take some months to sort through everything, but we're working through it.

The Horror!

So, what creeps you out?

Perhaps I'm not the guy to do a Halloween thread, because I don't creep out much anymore (except perhaps for things like this). Seriously, I firmly believe and understand more clearly as time goes on, is that Jesus Christ has routed Satan, once and for all. Yes, death is a horror, and Jesus Himself wept when He saw it up close (cf. John 11:1-45), but He has conquered death, so we no longer have to dread it. So ghosts and zombies and vampires and skeletons don't really bother me all that much.

It's either that or maybe it's because I've just gotten old and my senses have become dull. That's always a possibility.

The last time I was seriously creeped out was several ago when I saw zipping around on the internets and stumbled upon something called Victorian post-mortem photography. For those of you who aren't familiar with this, photography was a new technology back in the late 19th-early 20th century, so quite often when someone would die, their family would remember that they had no photograph of the the deceased. So, to remedy this, they would perhaps take a photograph of the deceased lying in their open casket, which wasn't so bad, but then they would get more elaborate, propping them up in chairs, or on a couch next to some actual living family members, and sometimes the photographer would clumsily retouch the eyes of the dead guy to make them look like they're open and living, but they look like cartoon eyes which only made them look even creepier. They even had metal frames in which the corpse could be placed to look like they were standing up on their own.

Some of the photographs are of dead children being held one last time by their parents and the looks of grief and anguish in their faces is heart-rending.

There was one I saw of an 8-10 year old girl next to her dead brother, and the photographer placed the boy's arm around the back of her neck and down over her shoulder, and the expression on her face was like, "Get. Me. The Hell. Out of this. Now." Totally disturbing.

And in some of these old photos, the dead guys look kind of ripe, like they ought to have been buried already.

From this, I've learned that if you ever come across a large group photograph taken during those early years, and there's one guy over on the side who looks like he's peacefully sleeping in a chair or on the end of a sofa, he's most likely not asleep; rather, he's probably dead. DEAD! Mwahahaha!

But, enough of this. Now for some of this:

Moar horror!

Let's start off with some old-school horror, namely, H. P. Lovecraft. Pretty much every one of his horror stories are in this $2.99 Kindle edition. My personal favorite is "Shadow over Innsmouth", but of course "The Call of Cthulhu" is mandatory reading. Also, I would like to give a shout out to "Nyarlathotep", a story that doesn't really go anywhere or do much of anything, but in only 2 pages, Lovecraft manages to create a totally disturbing atmosphere of chaos, despair, and madness. Lovecraft is a lot like Tolkien in that both authors wrote their stories to fit within a consistently defined, well worked-out universe of their own devising.

I don't know very much about modern horror authors. I haven't read any other than Stephen King. King has written a ton of books, but if you only have time to read one them, I think that one book should be The Stand. I first read it nearly 30 years ago and it is an amazingly effective end-of-the-world story. However, since it's original publication, King has gone all George Lucas on it and added something like 500(!) pages of additional material. I don't know if this new material actually adds anything to the novel or is just useless bloat.

Minor spoiler: My favorite scene is where one of the main characters has to get out of New York City on foot, so he makes his way to the (I think) Holland Lincoln Tunnel which is all jammed up with cars that were prevented from leaving the city by an Army blockade that was set up to contain the spread of the plague. Naturally, there's no power and all the lights are out, so he has to make his way in the pitch black, threading his way among the cars and trying not to look at the dead people in them. And everything is dark and deathly quiet.

When suddenly...

Behind him...

He hears...

A sound.

Thirty years later, this scene is still vivid in my mind.

And there's also the Walking Dead graphic novels, which I haven't read, but apparently it's still an ongoing series. My son tells me that at one point they got a new artist, so the recent books look completely different than the earlier ones.

This isn't horror as such, but close enough: more than one of John Collier's short stories have been made into Twilight Zone episodes. The main collection of his stories has been out of print, but is now available on Kindle. I first heard about this author from one of my English teachers back in high school and I've enjoyed his stories ever since. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:49 AM | Comments (280)
Post contains 2083 words, total size 13 kb.

We're close, morons. Very, very close.

I have good intel from a very reliable source that at least one of the "expand the map" states that Romney and Ryan are chasing now looks like it could fall our way.

Click here to phone bank from home for the campaign and help make this happen.

And if you want a good laugh, that numbskull from CNBC Jim Cramer predicted Obama will get 440 EVs. That isn't even remotely within the realm of possibility. If he says buy, you sell; if he says sell, you buy. Got it? more...

Posted by: andy at 04:43 AM | Comments (964)
Post contains 133 words, total size 1 kb.

Pathetic. Benghazi A Blip On Media's Radar. A whole bunch of so-called journalists should just hang it up after this. 8 weeks out and still barely any coverage outside of Fox. Oh sure, WaPo and CBS are starting to cover it. But just barely. Heads need to roll for this.

Disgusting that their political party and allegiance to it is more important than the lives of 4 Americans and getting out the truth as to what exactly happened. Funny, it wasn't too long ago that CIA leaks were front page news when they slammed Bush. When they paint Obama in a bad light? Not so much.

Also note that with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy getting nastier for those coping with the recovery, Obama isn't taking pictures anymore with FEMA or hanging out in the Situation Room. Hell, he's not even Taking Questions About Storm Victims' Frustrations. All that early praise for FEMA? Maybe just a hair to fast there MSM. FEMA Taps Private Vendors To Deliver Water. On Monday. So much for that prior planning. I guess a weeks notice that a major storm is going to hit the east coast isn't enough. I'm pretty sure by Day 6 with Katrina, Bush was being blamed in the news 24/7. Obama, not so much. I guess Geraldo is a bit distracted saving his Koi. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:57 PM | Comments (1695)
Post contains 757 words, total size 7 kb.

Open thread before the ONT.

Cheerleaders below the fold. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:41 PM | Comments (140)
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

That's like 15 Sandra Fluke parking lot sextravaganzas.

Posted by: Ace at 03:12 PM | Comments (862)
Post contains 34 words, total size 1 kb.

Below the fold. Open thread. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 12:35 PM | Comments (617)
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

Ace had the raw video of this late last night but the Romney camp has a polished ad version. It's a great line that encapsulates the choice the country faces on Tuesday.

Liberals accuse conservatives and Republicans of hating Obama because he's black. It's a silly and baseless charge. The reality is a lot of us hate him for things like this. Voting as revenge? Who talks like that? This is why so many think of Obama as "the other", as someone who doesn't reflect the basic traditions and assumptions of this country.

We'll be damn glad to be rid of him starting this Tuesday.

If you have a facebook account, consider posting this. Blogs and other forms of social media tend to involve preaching to the choir. facebook is an outlet where people tend to mix beyond partisan groups. People need to see this contrast before they vote.

Team Obama is doing what they always do when Obama gets caught saying what he really believes...they're lying.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:21 AM | Comments (709)
Post contains 189 words, total size 1 kb.

My favorite tweet from yesterday, on the nonsense that was about to be the NY Marathon tomorrow:

After consultingo con el Runner de Calle club, los advisoros, y Captain Obviouso, yo decidero to que cancelo elmarathoño

— Miguel Bloombito (@ElBloombito) November 2, 2012

This one wasn't bad either:

Felicidades! Yo soy camero to mis fuckingo senses! No marathoño!

— Miguel Bloombito (@ElBloombito) November 2, 2012

Top ten top tens today (all times EDT. Next week all times EST):

Alabama (1) vs. LSU (5), 8pm
Kansas State (2) and Oklahoma State (24), 8pm
Notre Dame (3) vs. Pittsburgh, 3:30pm
Oregon (4) and USC (17), 7pm
Georgia (6) vs. Mississippi, 3:30pm
Florida (7) and Missouri, noon
Louisville (10) vs. Temple, noon

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:32 AM | Comments (341)
Post contains 125 words, total size 1 kb.

For he is experiencing a grave, personal tragedy in the wake of the Frankenstorm.

1st morning off since storm- scrambling to find generator to save my Koi fish in pond-

— Geraldo Rivera (@GeraldoRivera) November 3, 2012

Millions are thirsty, hungry and without heat or electricity. Staten Island and the Jersey shore are damned near unrecognizable.

And this dickhead is whining about his Koi fish. How about helping your neighbors, Geraldo?

(thanks to JWF)

Posted by: andy at 07:00 AM | Comments (268)
Post contains 86 words, total size 1 kb.

Three days, people. Three. Days.

Like Scott Brown has been saying on the campaign trail up here, don't go to bed the night of November 6th wishing you had done more.

Also, a reminder for all you Chicagoland morons that there's an election-eve meetup. more...

Posted by: andy at 03:22 AM | Comments (570)
Post contains 52 words, total size 1 kb.