DANI'S TOP TEN SCARY THINGS FROM SCARY MOVIES

Today a friend on mine, Fiona, who is a part of an absolutely Excellent movie podcast which I cannot recommend enough (Remote Viewing) did some research on me for their halloween horror themed episode.

It got me a thinkin' about scary movies and then this happend:

DANI'S TOP TEN SCARY THINGS ABOUT SCRAY MOVIES

1. Small children. Little girls, little boys, laughing, crying, talking, not talking... if it's a human being and it’s still in the early stages of its life it's terrifying.

2. Strings. Specifically this kind (HINT: Does not link to picture of kitten with ball of)

3. Odd people. You know the kind. At first glance they may look perfectly normal but on closer inspection (usually from behind a cushion if you're me) you will notice that maybe their fingers are slightly elongated and narrow, or their grin too fixed, or their eyes are too stare-y.

4. Fingers*. I know I mentioned it above but fingers are just fucking creepy. Humour me and make your own fingers crawl across the desk you’re at now or even better, run them up your arm. See? They even sound scary. And. THEY LOOK LIKE SPIDERS!!!! SPIDERS STUCK ON YOUR HANDS!!!!!! AND YOU CAN’T GET THEM OFF!!!!!!!

5. See above but with fingernails. And double.

6. Nothing. To be more specific, nothing is something with a perfectly natural explanation which makes it nothing. Except the perfectly natural explanation for the nothing has a perfectly natural explanation as to why the first perfectly natural explanation is not actually a perfectly natural explanation which turns the nothing into something. That all actually makes sense. You may need to draw a diagram. Or just watch Paranormal Activity.

7. Mirrors. And reflections of any kind. This applies to real life as well as in movies.

8. Whistling. As seen probably before anywhere else, here. But more recently here, here, and of course here (actually I can’t tell if those last two are the same or not. though I'm sure the above mentioned Fiona will know).

9. Things in the Background. Usually these things do a really fast walk past in the background, almost always across a hallway or narrow alley of some kind and sometimes are seen in Reflections. Normally they appear as nothing more than a shadow or occasionally a small child (see 1). Optional: Entire orchestra hitting a note to emphasise the scare.

10. This face when it’s so subtly placed that by the time you work out why you’re suddenly paralysed with fear it’s gone. (But gone where?)


Okaaaay! Now I have scared myself silly googling and YouTubing daemon faces (scarier then regular old demon faces apparently) I am going to watch Pixar movies and eat cheese and drink pepsi max until my head explodes from happy then I'm going to go to sleep with all the lights on.

Pre-emptive rebuttal (just a ‘Buttal’ then?):
REGARDING CLOWNS: I admit a few years ago I would have added clowns to this list and while I agree that there are still some pretty scary individual clowns out there frankly the Insane Clown Posse has made clowns as a Thing ridiculous again. It's impossible not to look at them and either laugh and/or feel sorry for them which, traditionally was the reaction sought after back in the day. So good on the ICP for upholding the time-honoured clowning ethos!

*The one exception to number 4's Fingers rule is Thing from The Addams Family. But not his girlfriend, Lady Fingers was the scariest thing on that show.

Also, this:

Diary of a Temporary Cat Owner

Day One of being a temporary cat owner:

Dear readers,

Last night Lou dropped off his two cats. Both are pitch black. The girl one is called Stella (Steeeelllllaaaaaa!!!!!! [DAAS reference there for anyone who cares for it]) and the boy one is called Max. Stella disappeared as soon as she arrived prompting Lou and I to turn my house inside out looking for her. After a search that involved moving the bookshelves into my room and stripping my bed of it's blankets we eventually found her in a minute gap in between my bed and my bedside drawers, ending my half hour of feeling like the worst friend ever because I lost a cat before he even left. I have since fitted Stella with a collar and bell. I feel a bit mean about this but this is the only way I’m not going to be constantly worried about where the hell she is.

Max, I didn’t have to worry about in regards to hiding. What I did have to worry about was his inherent evilness rising to the surface. As soon as he was released from his cage he was out casing the joint, a low growl permanently escaping his little cat throat. A low growl, which increased and turned into a hackles raised, back arched, teeth bared full on hiss, as I got closer to him. Max also claimed my Lady Cave (my library) for himself and it seems I have been banned from it. I will have to spend the next month reading and watching only the books and dvd’s I had left off the shelves. And twice I have moments of only semi-consciously obeying some kind of incommunicable sense of self preservation and slowly turning around on the spot to be hit by a rush of pure fear upon seeing a pure black cat sitting perfectly straight staring at me with eyes full of casual malevolence. A look which was replicated with an added touch of disgust and contempt as he watched me sans clothes as I got ready for my shower.

My first night, last night, was hell. Firstly I live alone and when you live alone and you’re asleep, ancient survival instinct will kick in and wake you up every 20 minutes or so to tell you there shouldn’t be the sound of little feet walking about in your dark empty house. On top of that, a different kind of less important instinct will force you to get up at 2 in the morning, blindly shove your glasses on your face and walk out to the lounge to see if it’s the couch or the chair Max is scratching. These same senses will obviously neglect to remind you that Lou bought the cats scratching post; and that both cats are black so that’s not an odd shaped shadow on the floor, that is a cat and you should try not to step in it. It’s just a small scratch I’m ok.

Since I started my day apologising to Max and deciding I didn’t need to go to into my bathroom after all when he hissed at me from my bathmat, you can imagine I was more than a little nervous as to the reception I would get when I got home after work. I braced myself as I got ready to enter my house this afternoon (right foot shoved in first to block potential escapees) and decided to take the advice everyone had been giving me. I decided tonight I was going to Assert my Dominance. No more Mr Nice Girl. Err... if that’s ok with you Max. Is it ok? I waited until Max got all growly and in the manner of someone ripping a band-aid off yelled at him ‘Maaax… NO!!’ and then pretended in a manner that wasn't at all suggesting I was running away that I had to be in another room urgently. I’m very proud to say it appears to have worked. Or Max has switched to another form of torture. He appears to be alternating between wanting to sit on my keyboard (never has my delete button been used to much in so small amount of time) and wanting to sit on my head.

Well dear readers, on that positive note I must leave you. I have to go wash the cat hair off my tongue.

Farewell.

How I Became a Famous Novelist - Review

This is a review for the excellent book How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely (a writer for, among other things, 30 Rock and American Dad). I love this book. It's one of the best, cleverest and funniest I've read all year.

Original review found here: http://www.readings.com.au/review/how-i-became-a-famous-novelist-by-steve-hely


How I Became a Famous Novelist By Steve Hely.

In strewn banners that lay like streamers from a long ago parade the sun’s fading seraphim rays gleamed onto the hood of the old Ford and ribboned the steel with the meek orange of a June tomato straining at the vine.

If you read that sentence and thought the words flowed like a freshly dipped brush painting an image on the canvas of your mind then Steve Hely’s How I Became a Famous Novelist is most definitely not for you.

Dissecting best sellers with the detached coldness of a serial killer no literary genre is safe from slacker Pete Tarslaw when he decides he will become a famous novelist in time to humiliate his ex-girlfriend at her wedding. Using the 12 (until now) unwritten Rules of Best Sellers including Rule 6: Evoke confusing sadness at the end; Rule 7: The prose should be lyrical; and (my personal favourite) Rule 9: At dull points include descriptions of delicious meals, Tarslaw succeeds in his quest. But when you create a novel by putting together pieces of other novels then you really should know (especially if you claim to be a fan of ‘real’ literature) that what you’re going to end up with is Frankenstein’s monster and that’s exactly what Tarslaw gets.

E.B White once said, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it”. Until How I Became a Famous Novelist the same cannot have been said about literature, there are whole genres and sub-genres of books analysing books about how to write books. Steve Hely, the Dexter Morgan of the publishing world has changed that, I can promise you, you will never be able to read a book the same way again. In fact, I’m issuing you a challenge. Read this book. Go on. I dare you.