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“Give me now leave to leave thee.”
I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be every thing and their intent every where; for that’s it that always makes a good voyage of nothing.
#TGIF
“High Roller,” The Crystal Method
Posted for Thursday on Monday for open, overnight thread for Friday
Features
Statement by the President on the New U.S.S. Donald J. Trump and Bonus U.S.S. Ivanka Luxury Aircraft Carriers
A classy combat experience and a great value
The Zombie Apocalypse Is Upon Us
Part I: Zombies Become Zombies
Americans first learned about zombies from a travel book they read in 1929, from a play they saw in 1932 that was inspired by the travel book, and from a movie they saw in 1932 that was inspired by both the play and the travel book (directly).
First, the movie.
The movie was White Zombie, directed by Victor Halperin. It starred Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, John Harron, and Robert Frazer. It’s usually described as “atmospheric,” “old-fashioned,” and bad.
Note: White Zombie has been described in the above terms, including “old-fashioned,” since it opened in 1932. The era of motion pictures with sound had begun, and White Zombie, though it had sound, was too reminiscent of a silent film for contemporaneous taste.
Promotional poster for White Zombie.
With these zombie eyes, he rendered her powerless. With this zombie grip, he made her perform his every desire!
Even in 1932, men dreamed of finding ways to get their girlfriends to answer email.
White Zombie opens with a bride-to-be and her fiancé riding to their wedding in a carriage that must clip-clop uncertainly through a Voodoo funeral that is taking place in the middle of the road.
I know. Subtle. But, obediently staggering along the mouldering pave-stones along which all horror story victims must stagger, our heroes can’t take a hint.
The story of White Zombie isn’t that bad, even if the movie mostly is. Madeleine Short (Bellamy) and Neil Parker (Harron) have been invited by Charles Beaumont (Frazer) to have their wedding at his opulent plantation in Haiti, neither of them knowing that Charles intends to seduce and marry Madeleine himself. To that end, Charles has enlisted the help of his wicked neighbor, the Voodoo master Murder Legendre (Lugosi). After Madeleine and Neil arrive, Murder uses his evil, witchy-man eyeball power, along with a secret potion, a candle whittled into a human likeness, and a weird, Communist hand gesture, to transform Madeleine into a zombie.
The movie is worth seeing. The brief scene of the inner workings of Murder’s mill is likely how the movie continues to earn “atmospheric,” and the scene where room-temperature Madeline plays the piano for anguished Charles is very strange and thought provoking.
White Zombie is just over an hour long.
At the moment, the movie is freely available for watching online and downloading. And since it has a coveted place in zombie lore as the first zombie movie, hordes of misinformational essays, staring creepily at the movie from different angles, are also available. For our purposes: it’s there.
So much for the movie.
To the play.
The Mind-Blowing Awesome of Great Sext
“I’m not sure what they pay condoms, but it's not enough.”
Articles
“Give me now leave to leave thee.”
I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be every thing and their intent every where; for that’s it that always makes a good voyage of nothing.
#TGIF
Onward.
Hope Hicks Might Be Human
Hot chicks shouldn’t have to explain, anyway
#TGIF
Celebrated by decree of the United States government, of course, on January 2nd
Eclipse 2017
We didn’t listen!
Then Again, Again
Saving “Wereturtillian Behoovements” for a possible EP title
American State-Run Health Care (Updated)
Here to stay, gone tomorrow
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.”
First Lady Melania Plagiarizes Bible
Do these people not know we have Internet?
“A Very Important Person Died Today”
Jane Roe
A Night at the Grammys, Featuring Lady Gaga and Metallica
re•con•nais•sance
“To Reform Congress, Enlarge It”
“An interesting attribute of a cacophony is that no matter how many more voices you add to it, a cacophony it remains.”
The 2016 New Hampshire Recount Thread
You’ve got to try marguaritas at 5 A.M.
Charles Addams’ “Suddenly, I Have a Dreadful Urge”
Halloween, 2016
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether”
Contains lunatics, keepers, and asylum. Some assembly required.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “Mellonta Tauta”
“—insolent, rapacious, filthy; had the gall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock.”
Charles Addams’ “Dear Fellow Alumnus”
“Your face was among the missing at our annual reunion last June. Won’t you help us to keep tabs on members of the class of ’17 by telling us what you are doing now? . . .”
Charles Addams’ “Just the kind of day”
“Just the kind of day that makes you feel good to be alive!”
Halloween, 2016
A dark and stormy month
Theresa May, Don't Even Think of Abandoning #Brexit
And rectify the shambolic “deportation” policies of David Cameron
The Best-Dressed “Sick Man of Europe”
Jean-Claude Juncker doesn’t really recognise the need for compromise with #Brexit.
Why are any of us obeying the law anymore?
Tyranny, lawlessness, and corruption
Self-determination is so 19th century.
Unelected, unaccountable apparatchiks
Figures and Fantasies
Nationalism, instead of social justice and Marxist economics
William the Conqueror Was Before Richard the Third
Entertained and at his game
The Leaked Trump New York Times Interview Is Audio from the Last Election
Check to make sure we’re talking about the same leak, though
Marco Rubio, Conservative Hero
Gettysburg
“Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep,” Not So Much
None of the best of proverbs
Test
Mind the bucket.
Neon Blue
Open, overnight
The Misty Lowlands
Open, overnight
Hot Air
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Heard Around Wretch 32's '6 Words'
You have to say “person”
Air Force, Sir!
Do I look like a SIR to you?
The Pecker Placement Tales: The Lost Chapters
George P. Bush and Chelsea Clinton
Consider the afternoon constitutionals
#NoLivesMatter
Dead and dreaming
Trump vs. Obama
reel rage reath ratch
Cheap Labor
Almost as good as slave labor
Sea-Change
Something rich and strange
Ultra Unfettered
de rigueur. Mortis.
SoRo’s Renditions
Your mileage may vary
Tanya
You want to beat them, don’t you?
The Zombie Field Guide
Z-Type: People Needing to Masturbate
You’ll know them by their ceaseless vigilance
Hard-core, straight-up hippie-style activist, non-piker right-wing nut bloggers
Fight the power, man
Notes from Pacepa’s Disinformation
. . . there are few things more difficult for Russian and Western historians today than to predict Russia’s past.
Cold
Coffee and bones
Alexander King: Prints from Seabrook’s The Magic Island
. . . blood-maddened, sex-maddened, god-maddened . . . danced their dark saturnalia
The Old Man Is Dead
An excerpt from Seabrook’s The Magic Island
Collette
“You don't really want to drink water, do you?”
The Waste
A poem
The Calling
A few pictures
OMG
A local copy of a witchy-woman’s avatar
Turtle Moon
A poem
The Mirage
All right, but there’s an eye in there
The Walk Home
A short poem
Duty Calls
There might be hope for your planet, even now
An Atheist and a Christian
Overheard in bully Bottom’s Athens
Neurons in Debt
A poem
Hello World!
Let the probing begin
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