Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Weekly Geek Number 4

I had such a delightful time haunting people last week that I have chosen to join the Weekly Geek meme again this week. Welcome fellow Geeks! Ah HA HA HA HA HA!

#1. What are you passionate about besides reading and blogging? Tell us why you’re passionate about it… Post photos of what you’ve made or of yourself doing whatever it is you love doing.

Past readers of my blog will know that, besides reading terrifying and weird books and reviewing them (and also having my own army of winged monkeys) I love to slave feverishly on paper models. Especially delightful are paper models of monsters, mummies, or antique cars. I guess it combines so many things I love. First there’s the things a monster can build, like bats or robots. Second there’s all the cutting. I can really get into the cutting and cutting and slashing and CUTTING AND HACKING. A-HA HA HA!. Or pretending I’m a scientist in his lab performing experiments with dead pieces of paper that no sane man would attempt. Third, It’s nice having all these paper friends all lined up, staring at me diabolically from their shelves on the walls.

Here’s a picture of a diorama I set up with a paper model of an antique car I made. The original car model template I built it from was actually a Disney car (Donald Duck’s) so I had to get my crayons out and make it scary.

Nosferatu's Ghost Car

Nosferatu's Ghost Car

#2. Get us involved. Link to tutorials, recipes, Youtube videos, websites, fan sites, etc, anything that will help us learn more about your interest or how to do your hobby. Maybe you’d like to link to another hobbyist whose work you admire…

There are many places to get haunted models. Here are two that come to mind immediately:
Ravensblight: Haunted Houses, mechanical bats, evil tomes, and graveyards.
Haunted Dimensions: Paper models by Ray Keim of Disney haunted houses.

For the faint of heart, here are two great not-so-haunted papercraft blogs: Paperkraft.blogspot.com and Jaime Zollars Paper Forest. (Incidentally I’m a big fan of the artwork of Jaime Zollars.)

#3. Visit other Weekly Geeks. Link in your post to other Geeks who’ve peaked your interest in their passion. Or maybe you might find a fellow afincionado among us, link to them.

Nymeth wrote about music, which is one of my great passions. Bogsider shared his passion about Egyptology. Gavin on Page247 wrote about his adventures as a volunteer naturalist.

Published on January 31, 2009 in Memes. 10 Comments

It’s Not Too Late To Vote for Carrie!

This in the “I couldn’t tell you why but I’ve always had a crush on her” department, I have to admit that I’ve always had a crush on Carrie White from Brian De Palma’s movie adaptation of Stephen King’s masterpiece, Carrie. If you have not read the book AND seen the movie then I suggest you do both as soon as possible. Both will make you sleep less well for weeks, I assure you. While you’re waiting for Amazon or Netflix to deliver your homework, you can show your support for your favorite monster (that’s me, naturally) and vote for dear Carrie over at AMC, where they are having a Supernatural Teen Tournament.

Vote for Carrie White!

Vote for Carrie White!

P.S. Sure I like Hermione Granger too, but not as much. Who do you think should win???

Published on January 30, 2009 in News. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

Pin-up of the Week: Spicy Mystery Stories 1937 02

Spicy Mystery Stories 1937 02

Spicy Mystery Stories 1937 02

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Published on January 30, 2009 in Pin-up of the Week. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Pyramid Head Paper Model

I think sometimes when you’re a person who is as menacing as I am, people have a lot of preconceived notions. Like for instance, they might think I like to limp around with a hump on my back and that maybe a terrible accident has made my hands into horrible claws. Or maybe they think that years of crawling around in tunnels deep under the earth has blunted my senses. Well I’m here to dispel some of these stereotypes about things that bump around in the dark. We don’t just BUMP around in the dark all the time. We can be deep and sensitive and creative in the dark as well. This week I’m excited to share a paper model I made of Pyramid Head from Silent Hill. The original design is by Chamoo232 who has a lot of cool paper models on her site.

Pyramid Head from Silent Hill

I don’t know about you but it seems like pyramid head is a pretty insane character. I mean, for one thing, that knife is pretty huge. So a person ends up thinking the whole pyramid head things is Freudian. Pyramid head seems to be very popular. He appears in some of the Silent Hill games, but I guess mostly in Silent Hill 2. In the movie he shows up once dragging a body around, and then later, pyramid head pulls the skin clean off one of the characters, which is pretty brutal. I don’t know about you, but if I was walking down the street and saw pyramid head walking towards me, I might cross the street.

In Silent Hill 2, pyramid head seems to do quite a few awful things. For one, he seems to kill a few people, including Maria. He is also seen doing something kind of sexual looking but maybe not sexual in a kitchen with two Mannequin creatures. There are a lot of YouTube clips of that. For that matter, there are quite a few YouTube clips of various scenes with Pyramid Head. At one point there are two pyramid heads and they eventually impale their own heads on their own spears, killing themselves. Yes it is a wild and wooly world in Silent Hill.

I really like making paper models. I think I’ve talked about it before. When you’re making a paper model, you do a lot of cutting of the paper. And then also you glue the model together. Then you have a finished paper model. I have a bunch of papercrafts, from mummies to monsters. It’s very satisfying to make paper models, and besides the paper and the ink that you have to buy, it’s pretty cheap to make them too. I love making paper models!

Thanks for tuning in. This has been about the Pyramid Head Paper Model.

Published on January 29, 2009 in Papercraft. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Book Review: M.R. James – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

mr-james-ghost-stories-of-an-antiquaryWelcome back, friends and fiends, to another review on Dark in the Dark. Recently I was awakened in the middle of the night when a spider ran over my back. Something about the sensation made me feel like the spider had touched my side a few times, as if to test the ground first, and then it had sped over my back as quickly as it could manage. I have to admit the sensation was unsettling, but I bet the spider was having a heart attack.

And that’s the way it goes. Sometimes a spider runs over your back, and sometimes you’re the spider and the ground you’re walking upon is really a monster’s belly. And then sometimes you’re the monster but you find that while you were sleeping, spiders have been crawling all over you all night and now you’re pinned to the bed with a horrible web. Ah! Ah! Ahhhhh! You cry. Wait. What was I talking about? Oh yes. Sometimes you’re the spider.

Speaking metaphorically, of course, in this collection of short stories, M.R. James turns out eight harrowing tales of characters who, innocently or through their own misadventure, find themselves on the belly of a giant monster that is beyond their comprehension. Most of them will be lucky to escape with their sanity. One very unique thing about these tales of terror is that they were all written to be read aloud. This imparts a timeless ease of readability to them. This collection was first published in 1904, but a person could read these stories today and scarcely be aware of their age.

To extend the spider-on-a-belly metaphor, it is in the building of the monster’s belly landscape that James shows his particular genius. This is one of those few books that the reader will have to put down on occasion and say to the room. “Oh awful awful.” James assembles each situation and then deftly tightens the screws. We have here tales of revenge from the grave, a haunted room that doesn’t exist but somehow does, a timeless evil living in the heart of a tree, and worse things. My favorite is “The Mezzotint.” A man acquires a curious picture and over the following days, is startled to observe as a mysterious and menacing drama unfolds on it. Later he finds himself compelled to unravel the mystery.

Creepy Factor: 5 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 3 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5 (sadly)

Final result: I loved this book and recommend it to any fan of horror.

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary – M.R. James – Various Publishers – 1904

View this book on Amazon

Published on January 28, 2009 in Book Reviews. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .