To Do List

Taken from the desk in the Mad Science Lab:

To Do:
1. Organize the workroom.
2. Get groceries.
3. Feed pets & clean their cages.
4. Update Netflix queue.
5. Release mutagenic retrovirus into the city's water supply.
6. Make dinner for family.

So there you go: a small window onto the everyday domestic life of your local researcher. And you called him mad...

Reflections on Narrow Escapes

Okay, so the war is definitely still on. As I was driving home from work yesterday, somebody drove me off the road - off Mopac, just to be specific for a change. The vehicle that hit me was an older-model van, but I only found that out this afternoon; all I saw was a wall of white filling the left side of my vision. I felt the car start to turn, out of my control.

There was a moment of silvery static, and then I was in our apartment. Lucky, lucky, lucky... For one thing, Claire wasn't home yet. Lucky. For another, I was able to get back over to the site of the accident, on foot, quickly enough for the police to assume that I had simply wandered away after the crash, instead of...

Well, whatever it was. Lucky. I'd arrived in the apartment stark naked, but I still wasn't going to complain. Being in the car when it smashed into the support column of that bridge would have been a whole lot more inconvenient. The paramedics were frankly amazed that I didn't seem to be injured, but apparently they've seen stranger things. So my cover is still intact, which is so far past lucky as to be actively miraculous.

Hector the Cat, by the way, didn't even hiss at me. He was looking at me when I picked myself up off the floor, and then he shot off towards the bedroom and vanished. We found him under the bed when Claire got home. Well, not immediately; when Claire learned that I'd been in a wreck, she immediately insisted on checking me over. She settled down eventually, but for a while there she was really scared.

Work is back to normal, but now I have to deal with the insurance company... and figure out how to kill the entire snake cult before they try anything like this again. Or before they decide to target Claire as a way to get to me.

This is not how I wanted to start the year.

Reflections of a Deranged Cultist is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, businesses, or semideific extradimensional entities is entirely coincidental.

Monsters

I love monster movies. Oh, I'll sometimes watch horror movies with human antagonists; some of them (Silence of the Lambs springs to mind) are really quite good. But as a rule, I prefer actual monsters. I like watching people deal with the strange and unknown - and in some ways, the stranger the better.

I've mentioned before that I love zombies, so the fact that zombie films are thick on the ground these days is a great pleasure to me. But I'm good with vampires, too - though (while I understand the temptation to make them heroic), I think in most cases they work better as monsters than heroes. I'd love to see some well-done werewolf films; most werewolf films, even if they aren't completely awful, don't do anywhere near as much with the werewolf-as-a-monster as I think they could.[1] I'd have said the same thing about ghosts, except that Japanese cinema has pretty well fixed that (c.f. The Ring, Pulse, Dark Water, etc.). I'm even seeing some witches (Drag Me To Hell, as a loose example), and though they're technically human, they at least have supernatural powers at their command.

But all of those are half-human, or once-human, monsters. What I haven't seen as much of, in the last decade or so, is monsters who are just... monsters. Oh, there are some - the giant beast of Cloverfield (and all its little minions), the mind-controlling slugs of Slither, the mutated fish from The Host. Most of what is out there... are either remakes or older films. The Blob, Godzilla, The Thing (either version), the giant ants from Them[2], the autonomous swords of Screamers[3], the mind-controlling parasites of The Puppet Masters, even the velociraptors of Jurassic Park (and the tyrannosaurus rex, for that matter). Also, it occurs to me that I'm neglecting two of the classic franchises: Predator and Alien, both of which feature strange and fearsome beasties.

I'd really, really like to see more films with these kinds of monsters. And, yes, that's a lot of different kinds of monsters. That's pretty much my point.

So, what's your favorite kind of monster? What makes it scary for you? Alternatively, what good (or even decent) monster movies am I missing out on? Or, y'know, feel free to head off on a tangent in the comments.

---

[1] I'd note that the Ginger Snaps series, especially the second film, is a good example of treating the werewolf itself in new and interesting ways.

[2] I saw this film when I was quite young, and it scared me silly - though not quite as much as The Swarm. Having watched Them again recently, I'm pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up. Yes, the special effects are extremely dated - but the movie relied more on dialogue, pacing, and presentation than special effects anyway. That particular trick where you heard the giant ants before you saw them remains creepily effective.

[3] Despite being nominally science fiction, this movie remains creepier than most actual horror films. The sequel, however, was... disappointing.

Callahan's Monday Pun

So, it finally snowed yesterday. And because I generally scoff at what passes for winter weather here in Texas, we went out to lunch in the middle of the snowstorm. When we got back, I put the car in the garage. Naturally, the snow melted off the hood and roof of the car. Later, we brought my wife's car back and put it in the garage as well. (It was over at the local auto shop gettings its air conditioning repaired. Don't ask...) So now we have meltwater from two cars in there.

The floor of our garage is not inclined in the direction you might expect. Instead of running out the door and down the driveway, the water accumulated in one corner of the garage. It formed a sizeable puddle.

That's right.

We're carpooling.

Sanity? I must fix this.

A friend of mine (who happens to be a bit of a Trekkie) occasionally sees fit to... share... certain pieces of popular culture with me. I can only assume that this is a thinly-disguised attempt to break my brain, since that's pretty much what it does. Since misery loves company, I thought I'd share these things with you, my readers.

So, first, she exposed me to the movie Free Enterprise. Particularly this bit:


And then she hit me up with this:


Imagine my surprise when I discovered that these video clips are not, in fact, banned by the Geneva Convention accords, or even local ordinances.

Reflections on the New Year

Another year gone, another year closer to the Great Darkness that marks the end of what we laughably call civilization. And let me tell you, with the way work is going, I'm halfway looking forward to it.

If you remember, I mentioned that the rush leading up to the holidays was pretty crazy - mainly because everybody wanted to make sure that they had enough of whatever they needed to make it through to January.

Well, the post-holiday rush is actually worse. That's when everyone who had just barely enough meds to carry them through... realizes that they're now completely out, and they must have their refills now. What do you mean that you don't have it waiting for me? Didn't you know I was going to be coming in? It should be right there in the computer. You'll have to order it? That is not acceptable.

Overwrought and indignant customers aside, though, I'm feeling kind of ambivalent about the end of the world. I mean, I understand the appeal of burning everything down... but if the Ancients have their way, there won't be any starting over afterwards. It'll all be darkness and ruin, until the cold saps away the last vestiges of life. And while I used to be cool with that, the idea of Claire scavenging for survival in the rubble... I don't like it.

I'm still okay with being devoured, or whatever, myself. But apparently I'm not at all okay with anything like that happening to her. Which could be a real problem, if the end of the world is actually nigh.

I, um, I don't think I'm allowed to hope that it isn't.

New Year, New Feedback

It's official: the holidays have kicked my... butt.

So, while I'm back at work and too tired to write anything particularly intriguing or insightful (or even passably amusing), I figure I'll ask you, dear readers, for input on this blog. What do you enjoy? What would you like to see more of? What should I do less of? Is there anything I used to do that I should go back to?