Cooking sweaters and running from the dog-plant

The other night I dreamt that I was trying to dry my clothes in the oven. For some reason, I owned a whole helluva lot of angora sweaters (in pastel colours, no less), which I balled up and stuffed in there. And for some other reason, I was quite upset when they started catching fire. For me, owning pastel, angora sweaters would probably qualify as some sort of nightmare, and watching them burn wouldn’t bother me at all. But I guess you do strange things in your dreams.

Then tonight, I dreamt that my doggie turned into some sort of dog-plant, dead set on eating me. At least I think it was going to eat me. It didn’t actually say so, but I got that feeling. Call it a hunch. The dog-plant couldn’t see, although it was still as much dog as it was plant, so it stretched out looong, thin vines to search for me. All of this took place in the kitchen (the same place as the angora sweater melt-down) and ended up with me crawling out of the window. I’m not really sure how you could trap and eat anything big (I’m of course not big, by the way) using a long, thin vine. Even if you are a mutated plant-dog. It just seems like something that probably wouldn’t work. But then again, what do I know?

In either case, I probably shouldn’t have watched a movie like “The Fly” right before I went to bed. Tonight I might watch “Children of the corn” and see if that has a better result.

Typewriters and serialkillers

What is so damn special about typewriters? I don't get it. Recently, I saw a movie about a writer, who wrote all of her stuff on an old typewriter.
I have an old typewriter myself, actually. I used my pocketmoney to buy it from an antique shop when I was ten. It’s a great typewriter, as far as typewriters go, but actually writing on it is a bit like trying to get a three-year-old to eat its vegetables: it’s a slow process and sometimes you get your fingers bitten.

Those who love the idea of writing books on a typewriter, probably aren’t writers. They might want to be, I suppose. They might think that creating one masterpiece after another on a typewriter, is a terribly romantic idea. And every once in a while, someone (who’s obviously been staring at theirs for way to long) says that it helps them to “get in touch with the words”. I still think that after the second, third, fourth or maybe fifth draft, they’re going to wish they had a laptop. I mean, you can only sniff a certain amount of whiteout before you start going a bit loopy.

In the movie, the writer moves to a tiny, little island community with only 100-and-something citizens. Here, she moves into a tiny, little cottage with her typewriter (obviously) in order to work on her next book. She meets a handsome man (obviously) and falls in luve. Then he turns out to not only be a deranged serial killer, but a ghost as well. The thing that struck me as being the most odd, wasn’t the dead-bit, but the serial-killer bit. Son of Sam killed only killed a handful of people before folks started freaking out. And that was New York. I could go on a killing-spree in Hellhole, and I’m pretty sure I’d get arrested quickly. But this guy takes out several percent of the population, and nobody notices.

I guess everyone was just to busy messing around with their typewriters.

Red and stinky vs. the movies

How come people who exercise in movies always look so damn perfect? Take running, for instance. People who run in a film never really sweat, except for a small patch on their chest. Their hair is always perfect, their faces never get shiny and they’re never so out of breath that they can’t carry a conversation.

I, on the other hand, go running and I come home more or less drenched, my hair is a complete mess and I’m so shiny you’d think I’d been recently polished. Not only that, I’m as bright red as a rose in bloom, although sadly lacking the rose-like smell.

Now, I realise that making a movie where the characters just huff and puff and look as if they’re about to die, might be a waste of time. And you do want to show off the fact that this person is physically healthy, seeing how we out here in the real world are more or less obsessed with physical health. An obsession that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the condition of our own bodies.


I would love to learn how to run like they do in the movies though. I would probably get a lot more exercise if I could do that.

Piano

Okay, I'm trying to embed a great video here, but it only seems to work in the preview. So, if you can't see it, try this link:

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=7bdb323664c4979c78f41f4d39588d06.665845&cache=1&fr=fpman-link4

All work and no play

Have you ever seen "The Shining" with Jack Nicholson? You know that part where Jack is sits at his desk, typing the same words again and again? All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Well...

http://www.verysilly.blogspot.com/

Maybe somewhere there's a middle aged man - let's just call him Bobby - sitting in his mother's basement, surrounded by Star Wars memorabilia or something, working on this thing. And whatever you do, you don't want to give this guy an axe. Or a butterknife, for that matter. Maybe he had a pet as a child.

Maybe it was a dog, given to him by his concerned mother in order to make him more social. And maybe, one day, it disappeared and nobody knew where it went. But I bet Bobby knows.

I also bet that Bobby is unnaturally pale, since he spends his every waking moment in that basement, staring into the cold light of his computer screen. And his eyes are probably red and irritated for the same reason. But one day he might just get tired of his self-imposed confinement, and decide to come out into the world. So, if you come across a very pale person with redshot, bulging eyes, you might want to run. Just to be on the safe side.

The right sunglasses to wear in an alien invasion

Some friends and I were bored, and trying to figure out what fascinating things we should do with our time, when we stumbled across an old movie called “They live”. It was an early Carpenter film from the late eighties. The review said that it was a story about a guy who discovers an alien invasion, which he has to fight off, using a “machine gun and a pair of special sunglasses.”
This sounded so earth staggeringly silly (if that’s a word), we had to see it. How could we miss the opportunity to learn what sort of sunglasses you’d need in case of an invasion from outer space? We like to dress the part, after all.

In the movie, the main character, John, finds a pair of magical sunglasses, which enable him to see the true form of aliens (kinda skeletal with great, big bulging eyeballs) that have dressed up as humans, as well as the subliminal messages they use to control the planet (because they never bothered to read any of the articles on how subliminal advertising doesn’t work).

In a situation such as this, one might think that it would be a good idea to keep a certain degree of discretion. You know, not get caught by they psychotic aliens, and that sort of thing. I’m sure John thought of this. He probably thought long and hard for that whole second it took him to run up to one of the aliens, and tell it exactly how butt ugly he thought it was. Obviously, the alien didn’t take it very well. In fact, he used his special wrist watch (lots of special stuff in this movie) to call all of his alien buddies, who chased poor John up and down the streets for quite a while.

The review also said that John became the reluctant leader of the alien resistance. This was pretty much because everyone else were gunned down, leaving him the only member still standing. And yet, John was the reluctant leader. In the end, the resistance – John, that is – manages to stop the invasion, and the earth is safe, once more.

Strangely enough, this didn’t turn out to be one of those horror films that kept me awake at night.

(Pic by Aaron Logan for www.lightmatter.net)