I wonder
why
in action and adventure movies
like Gladiator
and
Rob Roy
always
kick off the
‘ Heroes Journey?’
I wonder
why
are always twenty something
girls
with twenty something
waistlines
and
how come in
Star Wars
which
“borrows its themes and fight scenes so obviously from samurai and kung-fu flicks“
do we never see an
actual
Not Even
a pretend one?
I just wonder
why.
Could you let someone walk by you, cut and bleeding or maybe scared and crying without doing a thing to help?
Could you let a man in a daze wander into traffic as buses and cars raced around him?
Could you walk by a child- and by a child I mean someone under the age of 10- and leave him or her standing in the middle of a store with a terrified look on his or her face- and not ask them if they needed help?
Would it surprise you to hear that most people have told me they would just let it go? That they’re sure nobody would help them if they needed it, that no one would care if they were hurt.
So why should they help anybody else?
“I would help you.” I want to say ” Actually I would have helped you. “
Jade at Brainripples asked this question on her blog:
“Who were your early artistic influences?”
I answered Rod Serling
and as I started to leave a comment
on her blog
about Rod
suddenly
this little prayer popped into my
head
and I realized I say it
whenever I start to write a story.
I wonder why?
From Ghoulies and Ghosties
Long Leggitie Beasties
And Things that Go Bump in the Night
Good Lord Deliver Us
Lizzie Borden- she was a woman- she was a killer -and she got away with two of the most hands on brutal killings in American History.
To refresh your memory, Lizzie lived in a state where ( in 1692 anyway ) you could just accuse a woman of being a witch and have her executed…just like that.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in 1892 women ( including Lizzie ) didn’t even have the right to vote-
that didn’t happen until 1920.
Anway- I think she did it but to this day Lizzie has her supporters and they say she’s innocent.
One of the arguments in her defense- which I think underscores the fact that Lizzie was found innocent because of her sex- was based on the time lines established for the killings.
Lizzie’s Stepmother was supposed to have been killed an hour or so before her Father.
The theory is that it was very unlikely that someone ( like a WOMAN ) who inflicted that kind of damage on a person with an AX could have left a dead mutilated body upstairs and gone on with her day and then come back later and did the same to someone else.
Have you ever seen the pictures of Andrew Borden?
Whoever did that was good and angry, they had worked themselves up into a mindless rage and that kind of rage can happen in the blink of an eye or it can build up…
say…
over an hour or so.
Links:
Link Photos From: The Chancery House
And visit: Lizzie Borden Virtual Museum and Library
I’ve had bad moments in my life but I haven’t reached the ” kill me now God ” stage.
It’s been close but I’ve dodged that bullet- however I have been around people when they all but dropped to their knees and hoped, they prayed that the Black Hole that’s supposed to be in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy will burst and then spread and suck them up like lint into a dust buster.
You can’t NOT watch those human train wrecks no matter how hard you try not to.
I like to go to this little Chinese restaurant for lunch- the staff is nice, the food is good and I happen to like watching the Chinese Music Videos that they have going on the TV.
I can’t understand a word of it, but who cares? The music is good.
Anyway, I’m eating my lunch and the waitress is telling me about her weekend and what she’s going to do to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
That’s when these 5 guys come in and she seats them at the table right next to me and sets them up with menus. While she waits for them to order she comes back to my table and she’s telling me all about her New Years plans and the food she has to make.
Sounded good and she did almost all of the chatting when the guys say they’re ready to order. So she goes over, takes their order and goes back to the kitchen.
That’ when these guys start going on about this case and how they’re going to play it in court and it was an education because I had know idea the law was so – flexible.
Lawyers I thought to myself- but you bet I listened in because the dirt they were dishing was pretty interesting. It was like Law and Order on TV but nastier.
Then they move on to other subjects, like this other attorney in their office whose sleeping with the receptionist … and this attorney and the receptionist are both women.
I’m just amazed at this point that these guys are so loud and vocal about this stuff when it dawns on me that they’d only heard the Waitress talk…and my friends she has a heavy, heavy accent.
And I am very very not white looking.
In fact there was a couple of dozen other people in there for lunch besides me and the Attorneys and almost none of the other patrons were speaking English to each other.
So I wondered if they knew I could understand every single word they’d said and I decided these are well educated people in the middle of Seattle having lunch should know better then to think something that…lame.
The waitress got the food out and just before she walked passed me I reached out and touched her arm and said, ” so, like are you gonna have Pizza at your party? Cause if you do I am SO there. ”
That’s when the silence from the next table spread and blotted out the Sun and changed reality as we know it.
I heard somebody’s fork hit the table and then I looked up and smiled at my co-patrons with a wolfish smile. That smile involved all of my teeth and it was so big I think I may have hurt some of the muscles in my face.
But it was so worth it.
It’s funny but at that moment I would have swore in a court of law that all five of those guys looked exactly the same…maybe it was the looks on their faces that gave that impression. You know it was that look that said,
” Kill me God, please kill me now. “
La Llorona (the crying woman) has terrified Hispanics across the United States and Latin America for over five hundred years.
Now here is your chance to meet her-
Bernadine Santisteven director of “The Cry” a supernatural thriller based on the Latino legend of La LLorona ( the Crying Woman ) told me that her film will get it’s chance to shine at the upcoming New York Latino Film Festival in New York City.
The time and date are tentative – July 25th at 7:00pm. Bernadine advised that people should email the festival directly at Info@
NYLatinoFilm.com and ask for screening information on The Cry.
In the mean time you can visit her very sleek new website for the movie by clicking here and you can read a very wonderful article she wrote about making The Cry for Anita’s Owl Creek Bridge here .
And you can get a very sweet taste of the film here .
Just remember as you go through these links and watch the trailer-
La Llorona is real-
Bernadine Santisteven
email:
There’s one thing I just can’t admit to people I know- I actually like some of Woody Allen’s films. I don’t know why, because I shouldn’t like them.
My brain isn’t wired to like movies with brittle shrill characters who couldn’t find their own back sides if you gave them a map, a book called “Backside finding for Dummies” and a Backside Finding Search and Rescue team to help them out.
I like movies with Pirates and Ghosts and Demonic kids that stuff babies into wine caskets and Mad Scientists that drip honey on people while they sleep and then turn bugs loose to devour the victim alive.
That’s me, that’s what I’m all about, and though I won’t cop to liking “Hannah and Her Sisters” I will say without a moments hesitation and lots of enthusiasm that one of my favorite movies of all time is Donovan’s Brain.
I like it for the ending.
At the ending of the movie the brain escapes from it’s tank and flies around the lab, chasing the mad scientist and his friends. The best part is Donovan’s spinal cord is still attached to the brain and the spinal cord is whipping around the place just like the creature in ” Alien ” would end up doing with it’s tail over 20 years later.
All kidding aside, I liked Donovan’s Brain because somebody had a story and they told it and exactly the way they wanted to tell it. They didn’t pretend it was anything other then a story about a killer brain that could fly.
That’s real story telling and that kind of story telling takes guts.
I keep that in mind when I write my own stories.
Donovan’s Brain- food for thought.
When I was about 10 years old I was sitting on the curb with some neighborhood girls and we were planning our lives- we decided right then and there who we would marry, where we would live and what sort of jobs we were going to have when we grew up.
Most of what I was hearing involved big houses and jobs as stewardesses or teachers and marriages to actors and the Osmond Brothers.
I remember my friend Karen sort of flinched and said, ” What about you Anita?”
I took a deep breath and I was off and running because like a lot of girls that age I was planning on ” one day “.
I said I was going to be a writer like ” The Twilight Zone Guy ” and then I would become fighter pilot and then after I got done with that I was going to be a Captain, like Captain Kirk, and be the first woman to land a spaceship on Mars.
I told my friends I expected to discover real aliens on ‘ faraway planets ‘ and after I died I was going to be buried on Titan in a cemetery they’d have there one day for Space Explorers like me.
And then I said I never wanted to get married.
I wanted to live in a cabin in the mountains with some pet wolves and I wanted a salt water aquarium full of sea horses.
My friends stared at me with their mouths hanging open.
Karen grabbed Melody, Melody yanked on Shelly’s arm and they moved a few feet away from me whispering to to each other and giving me horrified looks the entire time.
When they were done Shelly stomped up to me and I nearly dove into the street straight in front of an on coming car because I thought she was going to kick me
I swear to this day she was almost crying. ” That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I’m telling your Mom…everyone is right- you are a weirdo! Of COURSE you’re going to get married!”
Last Summer I was listening to a news story on the radio about the grand and glorious day when human and machines will be one.
The Computer Guy telling this story sounded like a Minister at one of those Tent Revival meetings that they air TV either really late at night or super early in the morning He was preaching fire and brimstone and all the bad things that will happen to those who don’t ‘walk the path’
The world was an imperfect place and this man wanted to ‘improve it’ before it was to late.
Okay, I made that part up- but the thing of it is this Computer Guy intrigued me because the only other people I’ve seen who are that afraid of the world live in cabins out in the woods where there are no roads or sewer systems and their little babies wear camouflage sleepers and they have bomb-shelters in their backyards.
They don’t think the world could end- they think it SHOULD end.
Of course after it ends there’s a plan…there’s always a plan.
And guess who has it?
Computer Guy says that one day they’ll be able to implant a chip in your head and that they can load programs right into it- you’ll never have to go to school and learn to be a Teacher or a Carpenter – or an Accountant.
You’ll just be ‘written’.
So how do you ‘write’ a brain to create a Count Dracula or Dr. Phibes? How do you program it to accept and develop ideas like those little wind-up toys that everyone has at their desks at school or work?
Who the hell will be programmed to design Pez Guns?
That’s what I thought- there is no plan for that sort of person to be ‘brought forward.’
I hope Computer Guy turns into ” I think I better Shut My Mouth Guy ” before he ‘deletes’ the people who make the world an interesting place to live in.
Just some bits and pieces I have laying around
in my
Macabre Notebook:
Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good
Die Young.
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
I wish I had made this story up-
it would have made me
famous
| Gravediggers held BBQ in cemetery |
Gravediggers in a Belgian city have been criticised for holding a barbecue party in a cemetery.
It follows a complaint from a couple who visited the cemetery at Merksem, Antwerp, to visit the grave of their son.
François and Magda Boljau were shocked to find the gravediggers holding a party in a shed at the cemetery, reports Het Nieuwsblad.
Mrs Bolijau said: “It was happening only 15 metres from his grave. The music of ‘Sex bomb, sex bomb’ was coming very loud from the loudspeakers.
“Children were playing between the graves. I couldn’t stand it and ran away in tears.”
Alderman Erwin Pairon, who is responsible for Antwerp’s cemeteries, said he was very annoyed with the gravediggers.
The gravediggers insisted they held a party every year in the same shed and that nobody had complained before.
But Alderman Pairon said: “Next year, they have to move. I understand it is very upsetting for the parents to have to listen to a party when they came to mourn.”
In a fight I’d have to say
Would have kicked
butt
up
one side of the street
and down
the other.
Irregular Bones 
