Colin Lorimer

I hadn't realized that I had acomplished so much:

Share the wealth!

Received this today:

Hello dear,

Greetings in the name of God my names is Mrs.Doris Matins Now
undergoing medical treatment here in Manuela Hospital Birmingham UK. I am married to Dr. Richard S. Martins. We were married for fifteen years without a child. Before his death he made a vow to use his wealth for the down trodden and the less privileged in the society. Since his death I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my matrimonial home.

When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of five million six hundred thousand Euros (5,600,000) with a Finance firm presently, this money is still with the Finance House. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next 45 days due to cancer problem. Though what disturbs me most is my stroke.

Having known my condition I decided to donate this fund to an individual or better still a God fearing person who will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct here in. I want an individual that will use this fund to provide succor to poor and indigent persons, orphanages, and widows and for propagating peace in the universe.

I understand that blessed is the hand that gives. I took this decision because I do not have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not inclined to helping poor persons and I do not want my husband's hard earned money to be misused or spent in the manner in which my late husband did not specify.

I do not want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly manner, hence the reason for taking this bold decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going. I know that I am going to be in the bosom of the Almighty.

I do not need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health and because of the presence of my husband's relatives around me always.I do not want them to know about this development. With God all things are possible. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contacts of my Attorney. I will also issue you a letter of authority that will empower you as the original beneficiary of this fund. I want you to always pray for me. My happiness is that I lived a life worthy of emulation. Whosoever that wants to serve the Almighty must serve him with all his heart and mind and always be prayerful all through your life.

Any delay in your reply will give me room in sourcing for an individual for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act according to my specification herein. Herein are my photos for your perusal.

I await your correspondence to my private e-mail address mrsdoris_martins@ymail.com

Yours Sincerely
Mrs. Doris Martins



My response:

Dearest Doris, or may I call you "Angel-cakes"?

I have just this very moment regained my composure, wiped the tears from my one good eye and picked myself up from my now rather soggy prayer mat to craft a response to you. To be honest it is not really a prayer mat, it is actually the mat that my cat "Jesus" sleeps on, but it does have a big embroidered picture of Alan Moore on it(which I bought from a fan back in UKCAC in 91)and as he has a big beard and long hair similar to our Lord, I figured it would be OK to use as a place of religious kneeling.

At first I was thinking of just clasping my hands together in prayer to send a "God mail" placed on the wings of an heavenly angel - but even though God is omnipresent and listening to all his humble servants I feared he may accidentally send that spiritual response to the wrong Doris, as you have noted your last name as both Matins and Martins. So to save any possible confusion I felt email may be the better option.

Come to think about it, thank the Lord God above for providing us with email communication as with snail mail you may not have received my response quite in time- and have in fact already met your demise. But based on the 45 day mark that you have mentioned you have left on this sweet earth: you should receive this with plenty of time to spare. Thank the Lord the stroke has not left you completely disabled as you are still able to write such intelligent and articulate letters. Deo gratias arseais!!

"Blessed is the hand that gives." Well my hand is without doubt, BLESSED! It has for many years given me much pleasure on a rather regular basis therefore your rather generous gift could not be placed in hands any more worthy than mine. Sex ex tastical! Cum en faceia! Cun ny smet terribleia!

Praise the Lord!

I will do my utmost to make sure that your money is spent wisely and in a Godly fashion. The whoring, the gambling, the drinking, the Roman showers, the tea-bagging, the klismaphilia, the necrophilia, the coprophilia, the furry fandom, the teratopilia and the spaffing are long behind me now! I may treat myself to a "Dirty Sanchez" now and again, but hey - we are only human!

So please, please get in touch and lets get these balls rolling!

Ascendo tuum

Lubbert.

........................................................................................

Make sure you all send lovely Doris an email to wish her well! Make it pretty soon, because she'll be dead in 44 days.

Poodles

Okay, I`m officially creeped out.

Deleting Lubbert.

Seems a lot of people had problems with the "followers" gadget over the past week: people disappearing from the list and whatnot. Now we know why as Google were obviously updating the gadget. Rather badly, I might add.

It would seem that I was actually following myself for a while there which must have given the impression that I was some kind of narcissistic prick. Not true, well, not completely...

Standing and looking at oneself naked in a full length mirror while reciting R.D. Laing's "Knots" is just my way of not just trying to comprehend my true inner being but also to face the extreme truth that is my ass.

asinus asinum fricat

The Shining

Fantastic poster design by Tom Whalen.

Check out the orig post at:liveforfilm

Pressig

My new band and related album cover:




Well not really...

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

Thanks Johnny
.........................................................................................................

I thought I should update to include my ten year son's album cover:

The original Lubbert Das:

Well that's not really true. I took the name from the Hieronymus Bosch painting: The Extraction of the Stone of Madness(The Cure of Folly) The inscription on the painting reads,"Meester snyt die Keye ras - myne name is lubbert das" (Master, cut away the stone – my name is Lubbert Das). Lubbert Das was a comical (foolish) character in Dutch literature.



Pretty apt eh?

I have always loved the name and the idea behind so I gave it to one of my subsidiary comic book characters many years ago, seen above at the top of the post.

His character bio was:
Lubbert Das is a Librarian who is said to dabble in the Black Arts. Highly intellectual. English/German descent. Certain books housed within his library are said to contain gateways to other worlds.

You could say he was a bit of a homage to Ditko's Dr Strange. But he was based more-so on the Maurice Denham character of Professor Henry Harrington from one of my all time favourite movies Night of the Demon. That's him to the left in the pic below:



Don't be fooled by his timid appearance. That man is pure evil, with the power to have you sodomized repeatably by an unstoppable fifty foot demon monster with big horns and a furry back.

It is a fantastic movie, which is actually available in its entirety on You Tube!

That reminds me, I will really have to get that comic book into gear- lazy bastard that I am!

Anyway now you know the reasons behind the title of this blog. Exciting stuff eh?

...

Simon Tofield

Rick Astley

Never thought I would ever type those words for the head of post. A name that quite literally when mentioned would set my eye twitching and start the onset of a rather severe gag reflex! That "song" remained at the top of the UK pop charts for what felt like 3 years and no matter where you went, it would always be playing as if it was on some kind of demonic loop. It drove me crazy! It got to the point that my hatred of it took precedence over more deserving irritants and ass-holes such as pro-lifers, fox hunting and mimes.

There seems to be a bit of a resurgence going on with the guy, as I have heard the song five times in the past two weeks. It took all I could muster in my lunchtime Subway joint when it came on not to ask the person behind the counter to "Please turn that shit off!" Maybe I have just been lucky over the intervening years since it came out, my 'good taste, musical guardian angel' protecting me from the evil bastard sounds of the "Waterman" and those other two talentless hack producers.

Anyway I came across this:Rick Astley Conspiracy on the rather excellent newly discovered Diary Of Fools.Com.

I apologize in advance for sending you to this post, but it is strangely worth it...

Prepare to be amazed.

Or not. Whatever...

Kubrick

I watched The Shining today for the first time in quite a while, which in turn led me to go online and search for answers to some age-old questions regarding some of the film's more inherently, esoteric meanings.

I came across this fantastic website:The Kubrick FAQ. It is ran by a guy called Rod Munday and I have to say it is one of the most informative examinations of a director that I have had the pleasure to read. Below are a couple of excerpts:

What is the meaning of things that seem to double in "The Shining"?

In his dictionary of symbols J. E. Cirlot (1) writes, "Every case of duplication concerns duality" balanced symmetry and the active equipoise [equilibrium] of opposite forces. Double images the symmetrical duplication of forms of figures [...] symbolise precisely that." There are two sorts of doubling produced by reflection.

i. Horizontal doubling that occurs when something is reflected by the surface of a lake - as in the opening shot of The Shining.

ii. Vertical doubling that is produced by looking into a mirror where the image is reversed. An example of vertical doubling is when Jack is shown reflected in a mirror when Wendy brings him breakfast.

William Stewart (2) observed that "a mirror reflects what is in front of it and is the only way we can see ourselves. It is the instrument of self contemplation [...] in some magical way looking though the door of the mirror [reveals] hidden truths." Mirrors also are discussed in Freud's essay "Das Unheimlich" (3). identifying the original function of the 'double' as an insurance against the destruction of the ego, and energetic denial of the power of death' Freud quotes Otto Rank observation that "probably the immortal soul was the first double of the body. [..] but when the double reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes a the uncanny harbinger of death."

French critic Michel Ciment pointed out in his book 'Kubrick' that Danny's response to Jack's violence against him was to invent Tony "a little boy who lives in his mouth." (this may be a variation on the above observation s by Freud and Rank). As Jack descends into madness Danny becomes entirely possessed by Tony and tries to warn Wendy through mirror writing, suggesting that Tony is the mirror of Danny. Other notable doublings of the protagonists in The Shining are Jack and Grady the former caretaker who's fate Jack seems hopelessly destined to repeat, and the two Grady girls that at first seem identical but on closer inspection are not physically alike at all. Some things double twice, as in the two pairs of two girls that Ullman says goodbye to while showing the Torrences around. Other things double by changing, and changing again, as is the case with the woman in room 237, who changes from a young beauty into a diseased hag when reflected in the bathroom mirror and then into a much older woman floating in the bath tub.

Mark Ervin wrote, "The Shining is a film which penetrates our awareness with disembodied items of reality which clash with expectation. Doubling and mirroring symbolism serves a higher purpose of 'expectation shock.'

Expectation depends on processes by which the mind "normalizes" events into memory traces. The film is a non-stop parade of disintegrating memory traces. The doubling back of time in "The Killing" has been revised into a doubling back on reality. If the mind is unable to sort out what was incomplete or irregular then these traces are lost and forgotten. No surprise that Danny's escape is to retrace his steps and that Wendy talks of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Jack, as we are, is trapped in circle of evil he does not understand, a labyrinth created of memories which have proven unreliable and pathways that are then forgotten."


What does the ending mean?

"I hope the audience has a good fright, has believed the film while they were watching it and retains some sense of it. The ballroom photograph at the end suggests the reincarnation of Jack"

Stanley Kubrick

Here's a section of Jonathan Romnay's essay on The Shining from the August '99 edition of Sight and Sound.

Amid the quiet - broken only by the ghostly strains of a 20's dance tune - the camera tracks slowly towards a wall of photographs from the Overlook's illustrious history. It closes in on a central picture showing a group of revellers smiling at the camera and the in two dissolves, reveals first the person at the centre of the group - Jack himself, smiling and youthful in evening dress - and then the inscription, "Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921" Cue credits, cue shudder from the audience.

Just what makes this chilly pay off so uncanny? It appears to reveal something, the final narrative turn of the screw, or perhaps an explanation of the stories ambiguities - but really it reveals nothing for certain. What's more the last thing we see is not an image but and inscription hardy the chilling coup de theatre we expect from a horror film. But The Shining is a film that, while it uses written language sparingly is most concerned with words: not just words of the literary chef d'oevre Jack attempts to write, but also the film's frequent intertitles, and the fetish word REDRUM (murder in mirror writing that preoccupies Danny,

The closing inscription appears to explain what has happened to Jack. Until watching the film again recently I'd always assumed that, after his ordeal in the haunted palace, Jack has been absorbed into the hotel, another sacrificial victim earning his place at the Overlook's eternal the dansant of the damned. At the Overlook , it's always 4 July 1921 - although God knows exactly what happened that night [..]

Or you can look at it another way. Perhaps Jack hasn't been absorbed - perhaps he has really been in the Overlook all along. As the ghostly butler Grady tells him during their chilling confrontation in the man's toilet. "You are the caretaker, you have always been the caretaker Perhaps in some early incantation Jack really was around in 1921, and it's his present day self that is in the shadow of the phantom photographic copy. But if his picture has been there all along, why has no one noticed it. After all its right at the centre of the central picture on the wall. and the Torrances have had a painfully drawn our winter of mind numbing leisure in which to inspect every corner of the place. It is just that, like Poe's purloined letter, the thing in plain sight is the last thing you see. When you do see it, the effect is so unsettling because you realise the unthinkable was there under your nose - overlooked - the whole time.

However you interpret the photographic evidence with which the film singularly fails to settle its uncertainties, this strikes us as an uncanny ending to an uncanny film. One of the texts Kubrick and his co writer Diane Johnson referred to when adapting Steven King's novel was Freud's 1919 essay "The Uncanny." The essay defines uncanny as the class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. Or as Freud put it, quoting Schelling, the uncanny is "something which out to have remained missed but which is brought to light. [...]

The Overlook doesn't want a neat caretaker, let alone a resident writer. It likes to reduce clever people to menials: look at Grady the butler, clearly a cultivated man through and through. the Overlook wants Jack as a clown, an entertainer for the bored spooks wintering up there alone, The privilege Jack is accorded (Tolerance from Lloyd the sepulchral barman, limitless credit from the management) are the sort of deals given to the in-house cabaret act. The ghouls are assembled to watch Jack wrestle with his demons and lose: this is effectively Kubrick's second gladiator movie, after Spartacus (1960).

Hence Jack's reward after his defeat: a central place among, who knows how many other doomed variety acts on the Overlook's wall of fame. He's added to the bill on the Overlook's everlasting big night back in 1921. And having done his stuff, he deserves an acknowledgement from us too as we get our coats and leave. And that's exactly what he gets. The last thing we hear in the film after the echoing strains of midnight with the stars and you is a round of polite applause over the end credits, which then dies down as the ghouls leave the theatre.

Daniel Krall

Seems a little remiss of me that that I haven't posted anything of Daniel Krall's work on this blog.

I met Daniel in 03 on my first trip to the San Diego comic con. I had known his work from the Oni published comic "One Plus One" which I had thought was excellent, but on viewing his wider portfolio I was just blown away! I have just stumbled across his newly refurbished website:www.danielkrall.com via his old blog and I highly recommend that you check it out too. His work just keeps getting better and better.

We have kept in touch over the intervening years and I have always meant to try and get a commission piece out of him. Looking at the stuff pictured below makes me realize that I really should make a move on that!

Just look at that Iron Man illustration; sickeningly good!

Bug Bastard!!

I have been pretty much out of commission the past week, as I have been holed up in bed coughing my lungs out! Only the flu can help to remind us of how fragile and inconsequential we truly are.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten over the worse it...

Below is the song "Little Bird", taken from one of my favorite bands of the moment; Threatmantics. The album is called "Upbeat Love" and I would suggest you all go out and buy it! Unlike myself, who downloaded it for free...

WHAT?! I'm sick, leave me alone.

Lux Interior

Saddened to hear about the passing of the Cramps' frontman, Lux Interior. He died today of an existing heart condition at the age of 62.

Pizza delivery man scandal!

Bought a Pizza tonite for din dins. I've got the bloody cold and I just couldn't be bothered making anything to eat! So now I'm sipping ye old hot brandy to alleviate my suffering and will probably retire to bed with the book (pictured below on the previous post) I've convinced myself to read that thing from cover to cover. Why? No real reason- maybe just that after spending twenty bucks on it, I feel I should do something with it! And reading it seems like the most obvious option.

So yeah, getting back to the pizza!

Doorbell rings and it's the pizza guy all smiles, with the waft of really unhealthy "I'll have to now treadmill myself into early morning to lessen the load this monster is going to put on me" -type thing. So he passes over the pizza and the conversation went something like this:

"Hello sir!"

"Hi"

"Pizza for you sir?"

"Yep"

"Here you go!"

"Thanks very much! Now, how much do I owe you?"

"That will be, let me see- $22.05"

"Okay- well.."(calculating the tip figure in my very unmathematical head)

"Make it $25"

So he takes my card and starts to fiddle with the portable visa card machine.
Then realising that $2.95 was a little under, I recalculated and added:

"You know what! Make it $3.50"

So that the the tip was leaning more towards the acceptable 15% mark.

To that he responded:

"Aw, make up your mind!?"

Now, he did not say that in a jokey way, with a raised eyebrow and a little smile dancing across his lips. Not at all! He did in fact seem genuinely pissed off that I had disturbed his calculations and in my rather idiotic way had decided to give him a more appropriate tip of 15%.

I was gobsmacked! Now I could have riled to his comment, but as I had the cold and was feeling rather miserable- coupled with my need to eat; I decided to let it pass.

My unspoken response was:

"Well you know what f#*ker! I still cannot make up my mind- mmmmm (ponder,ponder) Wait a minute; you know what- let's make it $1.50. How's that!? Does that suit? Does that seem more reasonable to you? And how about this, I make up the rest of the tip by taking one of those hot slices of pizza and I then shove it in that gaping orifice that you call a mouth!! You muppet, monkey f#*k!!"

Damn me and my passive aggressiveness!!!

Now I know these guys need the tips to help supplement their paycheques and usually for that matter I can be known for over-tipping, not because I'm spendthrift (Shit!OK, Please ignore previous book post!) more-so I can understand and relate to how difficult and ungratifying a service job such as pizza delivery can be!

So all in all maybe you were having a bad day big fella, but try not to take it out on a paying customer who was only trying to do the right thing by you...

I'm off to bed!

Impulse buying

This arrived today from Amazon:


Jack Torrance's first novel, finally published after his untimely death at the Overlook Hotel. Dramatized in the Stephen King book, "The Shining," as well as the film by Stanley Kubrick.

"Untimely death" now that's funny! Sadly however the above blurb is no-where to be found on the actual book! It is available here.