October!!

So with the start of October, comes the count down to Halloween/Samhain. And with the start of my favorite month come the first installment of my horror movie posts! These are my takes on Horror Movies, and this post is 55 rules to surviving a Horror Movie! So enjoy :)

55 Rules to Surviving a Horror Movie

Disclaimer: All you have to do is follow these easy fifty five rules and you’ll survive through any situation you find yourself in, but break even one of them and start writing your will.

Rule #1: No matter how lost you are in the woods, never go into the abandoned house, just take your chances in the woods.

Rule #2: When driving through the dessert, avoid back roads, stick to the main roads and especially don’t listen to a stranger’s directions.

Rule #3: NEVER pick up hitchhikers, no matter how nice they might seem.

Rule #4: NEVER go hitchhiking yourself, because if someone actually picks you up, they’re not right.

Rule #5: Don’t trust your boyfriend to protect you, worry about your own safety, they’re going to be dead soon anyway.

Rule #6: If water starts pouring out from anything that it shouldn’t be pouring out of (i.e. TVs, walls, couches) stay away from it, don’t walk closer.

Rule #7: When you’re at a slumber party and someone suggests playing Bloody Mary, slap that person upside the head, but whatever you do, DON’T play.

Rule #8: Don’t trust you’re car to get you away from somewhere; it won’t start, so just run away.

Rule #9: If a dead body moves… Run

Rule #10: If you hear a noise in an otherwise thought deserted place, Do Not go towards it.

Rule #11: Never assume a killer is dead, he’s not (shoot him and or hack him until he’s actually dead)

Rule #12: If anywhere, and you meet some stranger and they start talking about something from another decade like it’s the present, it’s safe to say there a ghost.

Rule #13: Seeing a person in a mirror and then turning around to see there not there is NOT NORMAL! That’s your ticket to run.

Rule #14: If your child suddenly has an imaginary friend, most likely they’re not imaginary, they’re dead and using them to get to manipulate them.

Rule #15: NEVER trust creepy children.

Rule #16: If an offer on a giant house seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Rule #17: Dead is better, never bring your love ones back to life, it’ll only be bad for everyone.

Rule #18: If someone you know sleeps during the day, and only comes out at night, face it they’re a vampire so drive a stake to their heart and get it over with.

Rule #19: Never have sex, if you’re already not a virgin well sorry but it’s too late. But the moment you have sex you’ve signed your death sentence.

Rule #20: If you hear voices in the morgue, chances are something’s not exactly all the way dead, and it’s better to get the hell out of there.

Rule #21: Black eyes on a person are NOT NORMAL!

Rule #22: If someone shows up in a picture that wasn’t there when it was taken, just burn the picture.

Rule #23: If someone dares you to go into a “haunted house” don’t do it, better being called a chicken then dead.

Rule #24: Never play with an Ouija board, at the least you’ll piss off a spirit, if not going as far as getting possessed.

Rule #25: Don’t play around with death, if someone fakes being dead for a prank, or otherwise pranks someone in the style of horror, they’ll most end up dead.

Rule #26: Know matter how drunk or otherwise intoxicated you are, never go to a cemetery, only bad can come from it.

Rule #27: Don’t dishonor the dead, don’t mock them, don’t toy with them, because it never turns out good.

Rule #28: Never mess with a grave, you’ll just piss off the spirit of that grave and they’ll set a vendetta against you.

Rule #29: Stay away from abandoned hospitals, insane asylums, factories, and prisons (this should be self explanatory)

Rule #30: Don’t trust authorities to believe you’re outrageous stories; they’ll pass you off as insane and won’t help you, so just help yourself.

Rule #31: The cops can’t protect you, if you get them involved in your supernatural problems they’re just going to end up dead.

Rule #32: The most secure location will not be safe, the killer or killers will find away in.

Rule #33: Even a church might not save you there are things that even God can’t control.

Rule #34: The local legends usually aren’t legends.

Rule #35: The creepy guy in the house down the street will be the one to help you out in the end.

Rule #36: If you’re seeing things that aren’t really there, it’s time to leave.

Rule #37: Never volunteer to wait in the car.

Rule #38: If you do decide to wait in the car, make sure you STAY IN THE CAR, as soon as you walk away from that car, you’re dead.

Rule #39: You’re cell phone will never work, so don’t bother, you could be right under a cell phone tower and it still won’t work.

Rule #40: The weapons that you find (knives, guns, chainsaws) won’t kill the killer, don’t bother.

Rule #41: What will kill the killer are the things that you usually wouldn’t use, so go for those first (TVs, stereos, crutches, car parts, alcohol and fire, croquet mallets, etc.)

Rule #42: If you here a chainsaw… RUN!

Rule #43: Never trust European business men no matter how nice they appear.

Rule #44: Don’t let anyone help you with your car if it breaks down, you’re better off on your own, then in the hands of a stranger.

Rule #45: Never eat or drink anything a stranger gives you, you don’t know what, or even who you’re eating or drinking.

Rule #46: Don’t play chicken on a back country road, or really ever.

Rule #47: Just stay away from children all together, they’re bad omens

Rule #48: Never split up, this once again is self explanatory

Rule #49: Resist the urge to walk on stairs, up or down it doesn’t matter, once you put your first foot on them, you’re dead, just stay on the level you walked in on.

Rule #50: Animals are always good weapons, especially dogs granted that they are on your side and not the killers

Rule #51: Don’t read anything in a different language or anything that sounds like it could be a spell it’s just asking for trouble.

Rule #52: Always answer your cell phone if it rings; don’t blow off the person because most likely they’ll warn you about the killer.

Rule #53: The nice happy toe truck driver or mechanic will always turn out to either be the killer or an accomplice.

Rule #54: If you’re over the age of fifty you’ll be fine, it’s those fifty and younger that have to worry.

Rule #55: Screaming doesn’t help anything, it just draws attention to you so resist the urge.

Demonic Parasite

Melinda lie in bed, sweat poring down her pale forehead, and her stiff limbs. The candle placed by her bedside was now down to a stub, perched in a pool of hot wax flooding onto the table. Her breathing was as erratic as the flashes of lightning outside her window. Her lips were a pale blue and her hair was now wet from the cold sweat. The stench of death seemed to hover around to the room, waiting to extend its long fingers and embrace Melinda.

The Bible on her bed was opened to Psalm 23, it’s red ribbon flipped over on the sheet like a streak of crimson blood. The tips of her fingers, lying lifelessly on the hot sheet, were changing from white to pale blue. Outside her window rolling green hills were covered by the shadows of the dark clouds overhead, as the sheep grazed on the emerald grass, oblivious to the imminent storm.

Just then there was a noise at the door, and she turned her stiff neck to see the a man walking in with a long black cloak on, the hood pulled up so she couldn’t see his face. He seemed to glide over to her beside, and look at her with eyes not visible to her.

“I don’t remember asking for a priest,” Melinda said wearily.

The figure didn’t say anything. Her just went down on his knee by her bedside and she frowned and looked at him in question. His face was focused on her face, and when she touched the Bible with the tips of her fingers, he seemed to flinch and she found this very weird. Then suddenly as a long corpse-looking finger protruded from the sleeve of the figure’s cloak, she shuddered.

“You’re not a priest are you,” she whimpered as his hand was revealed completely out of the sleeve, “Oh God…”

“Actually quite the opposite,” the figure said in a deep voice.

He then pulled the hood all the way down to reveal a twisted, pale green face. His eyes were wrinkled, along with the rest of his forehead, and his lips were bright red, covering up monstrous fangs. Melinda attempted to pick up the Bible, but she was too weak, and ended up knocking it off the bed.

“Get away,” she said, shaking all over, “Get away unclean spirit…”

“This is the only way for you to survive. You do want to survive right? Go on to lead a healthy life? Well when I’m through with you you’ll have a very long one. Well not so much life, as a very long death,” he said as he cocked his fangs and bore down on her.

She screamed aloud as his long fangs pierced her skin, and punctured her jugular vein. The pain was unbearable as he drained her of blood, drop by drop. Her head grew extremely light, the room started to spin, as she heard the rain start to come down outside. She was aware of the demon’s fangs retracting out of her neck, leaving her to lie there on the bed, but the next thing she knew she was seeing darkness.

Short Stories

So since tomorrow is the start of October, my favorite month, I have been inspired to share some of more gruesome short stories with the masses. These are all old ones that I didn't know what to do with until now cause they are very short and sweet (well maybe not sweet). Then I figured since it is October I will start posting them here for everyone to enjoy, and maybe get nightmares from (which is my ultimate goal *insert ghoulish laugh here*). Also for all of you that are as into October and Halloween as me, Mrs. B (Confession of a Pagan Soccer Mom's Blog) is having a 31 days of Halloween extravaganza on her blog. To get to it click on the button to the right here and it will link to her page, which I will be featured on tomorrow since I am a guest blogger! So enjoy her blog as well as mine, and have a Happy and Scary 31 days of Halloween!!

The Horror Movie

To start off, let me congratulate all the great directors and producers of all the great horror movies of our time, and the times before us. May they live long and prosper on scaring the living shit out of teenagers across the nation, and across the world. They have mastered the art of the blood cannon, the low angle shots, and that suspenseful music that we have all grown to love, and in some cases hate. They have pioneered the movie industry, and although they have yet to win an award for best picture, we still love them to death, literally.

Over the years the horror movies have gotten less and less about true terror, and more about shock effect, and gore. Now don’t get me wrong I love to be grossed out to the point where I can no longer eat popcorn when I go to see movies, but there is no doubt that the stylistic flare of these movies have changed. First of all they are in color, which something that the original Frankenstein, Nosferatu, and The Wolf Man couldn’t grasp, but it’s also the level of acting, and even the plots.

So we’ve gone from black and white vampires and zombies walking around slowly, and the camera shifting away when people were killed, to ghost girls crawling out of TV’s and guys with chainsaws running around chopping people in half, all with as much blood as possible. And in between those two extremes, were the building years, where they pushed the envelope as far as they could go, till they achieved that perfect R rating.

Mingled in the growing years, we sure pushed out some great ones, where big name actors found their break, doing these teenage horror movies. For example John Travolta got his start doing the cult classic Carrie, and Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Both great actors, that started doing movies in which, they both died, but nevertheless got them noticed by big name industries.

Through the transitional period mainly the 60s – 90s, all the scenarios possible were exhausted, so what was to happen later? Unoriginally, Copycats, and the most eminent of all, the sequel. Oh the sequel, that movie or in many cases movies, where the killer has come back after no doubt being killed hundreds of times, to wreak havoc on new unsuspecting victims.

Then when all the sequels were tired out, all the possible spin offs, knocks offs, and all the other offs that come with the genre, we’re left with what we have today. What is that you ask? Well I’m talking about the remake of course. That movie where they butcher the old story, use actors that people have actually heard of, and make it as gory as possible to compensate for the lack of special effects in the 70s and 80s.

So when it all comes down to it, there is no such thing as an original horror movie anymore, they’ve all been done a million times. So that brings me to the point of this whole tirade, cracking on, and praising the industry. As a society we have come to love the genre, we have come to worship at the feet of those like Wes Craven and Eli Roth, we have lived on the torture and pain of other, nevertheless that it’s not real. We have become so obsessed with blood and gore, that we expect more as the movies go on, to a point where nothing is off limits. Not slicing off the Achilles tendon of a torture victim to have him flop around on the floor, or the infamous “head on the stick” where the spinal cord is severed at the point where the victim is literally a head on a stick, or the constant peeling of skin off numerous body parts.

As a result of all of this, all the components I have discussed we have come up with 3 categories to the horror genre. Type one, the Slasher Movie. This is the movie for all of you teenagers out there that can’t get enough of Jason or Leatherface, and their countless victims. Type two, the Psychological Thriller. This is what I believe is the true horror movie, where the directors rely on the creep factor rather than blood, and while there is some gore, it lends to the story, and you have to actually think about what’s going on. And last type, type three, the Supernatural Movie. This is the movie that has both of the components, it has the gore factor, and the creep factor, but it also has some level of supernatural activity, some level of something that’s not right, like a ghost, or a mysterious video tape that kills people.

So now that we know what the public likes, especially the teenage population, we can explore more in depth on each category. And although how mundane I feel each movie might be, each horror movie has some appeal to some audience, as well as an underlying theme. Some themes are very in your face, like the importance of family, or that you should follow your dreams, but some are subtle like when faced with dire circumstances that best comes out in you, and you find your true self.

Some movies, especially the older ones, like from the 50s and 60s have underlying meanings. They hide in their layers something that was going on in the world at them time. For example, The Blob is really about the Red Scare, hence the blob getting redder and redder as it eats more people.

Basically what I’m trying to say is horror movies are a way of life, we find something in them that we can relate to and we keep coming back for more. We can relate with the characters, and although most of the time we would never find ourselves in a situation like the ones in horror movie, we can figure out what we can do in a situation like that. Horror movies will be around for along time, they will continue to be gory knock offs, and never ending sagas where the killer never seems to die, but nevertheless they will continue.

Sympathy for the Devil...

So after a long conversation that I just had with my friend (over fb chat) about the BP hearing that are going on, on Capital Hill it inspired me to write about how I feel about the situation. So Tony Hayward is now practically on trial for this mess, Fox News and others like it call it a "public flogging" and that's pretty much what it is. As my friend put very well Hayward's face during this hearing looks like he's "staring at a guillotine." Now the thing is I don't really have much sympathy for the guy. His company made a HUGE mistake and he deserves to fess up and admit that it was a HUGE mistake, and he should be made to answer the questions that Congress has for him. The problem with this is, what is this doing to fix the actual PROBLEM? Nothing, nothing will come from teh Representatives spitting out their feelings, and pushing the guilt envelope for Hayward. He knows he screwed up, he knows that he's in hot water (well more like lava) and all this is doing is pointing it out to everyone. Sure it's great that we're gonna get our questions answered, but what about the biggest question of all: When is this whole mess gonna go away? And this hearing isn't doing much to help this question. And the front runner to all of this, none other than our fearful, I mean fearless, leader of these hear United States. Shouldn't the Obama administration be the fire that's lighting the hot water that Hayward is in? Where were they when this first went down? They're supposed to be the top officials in the country and surely they know what they are doing right? Well then why is this problem still a PROBLEM? Why is it taking this long? If you ask me I feel that OBAMA should be the one that's on the cutting board, he's the one who should be facing the guillotine.

Apathy

So last night I had a very long talk with my roommate about politics and current events that was very enlightening. I thought about how much I watch the news and how invested I am in politics, and realized in my generation I am the minority. Now a days students (specifically college) are more concerned with what's going on with their favorite celebrities then what's going on in politics, economy and such. They consider watching E! or TMZ watching the news, and where I am like many guilty of watching those programs (and reading perez hilton's website) I balance it out with watching the news. Then you have the students that watch the news, read the paper and such, but they only read ONE paper, and only watch ONE station. This isn't good either. You have to get every side of the story. My ritual in the morning, is while getting ready I watch Fox News, flip in between that and CNN/HLN (this is of course unless the Boy Meets World episode that is on is one of my favorites), then when I get to work after checking my email, I read the headlines on foxnews.com, cnn.com, msnbc.com and washintonpost.com (which I mostly look at to get my daily dose of the comics). This way I get to see all points of view of the headlines so I have as much information about a subject. Then if someone brings up the subject and can give them my opinion based on all the knowledge I've gathered on the subject and I can back up my stance.



The problem with doing all this, well a lot of people don't really seem to care about the issues. I miss working on Capital Hill where everyone was paid to know what was going on in the world and especially with politics. Now it's even worse. Living in an apartment complex where the majority of it's tenants are students, who have shut their brains off over the summer, don't want to sit down and have intelligent conversations about current events and political candidates. So I usually result to calling up my mom and having hour long converstations about that stuff. But I miss debating people. I want to have a meaningful conversation with someone who doesn't agree with me so i can get their viewpoint and they can get mine. Over the school year it's easier to do this since I can talk to Professors and debate them. Of course I picked a major (anthropology) which tries to stay away from politics so it's hard to have conversations with my classmates and profs that aren't about the new archeological or anthropological studies.

Now obviously I can't force people to be like me (even though sometimes I really wish I could) so all I can do is keep people in the know about these things and hope that it sparks their interest. Then I hope that they go out on their own and read the paper, or watch the news.

Would you Rather...

So, since today I'm alone in the office I'm listening to my home radio station DC 101, (online obviously) and they are talking about this woman in Cambodia. The woman was living in the jungle for 18 years and when she returned hated it back at home. Then she went missing again. Then they found her 11 days later in a dugout toilet, where she was chest deep in waste. This whole story has now sparked the most ridiculous of the "would you rather" game. Would you rather spend two days in the Cambodian Jungle, or spend two days in a dugout toilet? This conversation has been going on since 9 o'clock and is entertaining me immensley. It's good there's no one else really here cause I'm laughing my head off at the rationalization of the answers. The general census: most would rather stick it out in the jungle then chest deep in fecal matter. Their answer is what mien would be. I'd much rather risk my life in the jungle then be in the dug out toilet. So all you people out there, what would you rather do?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h6fnhhlk3fv0AgI5XvnGkYZfmrcg