Technical artist. Blogging since 1999.
The farmhouse beguiled Keel, riding the limit of his vision upon the distant hillside. It appeared as a ramble of joined-up houses and outbuildings predating the two ephemeral centuries his life had touched. A stand of trees fettered the largest mass, presumably a barn, at one end. The walls were lime white, the roofs orange tile in two shades that didn’t quite agree, like the rooflines. If the…
“Its malevolent gravity drags humanity and all human ideas into its orbit, warping them beyond recognition. Beneath it, within its context, everything becomes corrupted into the worst version of itself. It takes joy and turns it into vindictive glee; it takes self-reliance and turns it into solipsistic psychosis; it turns love into smothering assault, pride … Continue reading "Surveillance…
In the last entry in this series, we defined True Horror genetically. Here we look at its children. Basic genre hybrids like Scifi Horror are out of scope. Something needs to be set down in writing here: Not being True Horror does not make a work bad. Social media is for rage-bait; this is a … Continue reading "True Horror Subgenres"
Hard to believe it’s been almost 10 years since I put Sax Rohmer’s Moris Klaw stories online. The Occult Detective subgenre was already getting crowded when Rohmer put his spin on it 100 years ago (but then, blogging was already getting crowded out by social media when I finished this project in 2016). I’ve given … Continue reading "Have You Read “The Dream Detective?”"
Horror’s long story is about mixing bloodlines, fuzzy edges, mistaken identities and schismatic reformers. This is the short one. We’re here to define it. Genetically. Why bother, if everyone’s having fun? When anything can be Ø, Ø means nothing. Mixing genres is fun, but if the writer doesn’t understand, respect, even know what they’re mixing, … Continue reading "The Strict Definition of Horror"
R.E.M.’s 2011 swan song anthology, with three amazing new tracks. Weird to realize that R.E.M. was also a competent country and punk band.
If you’re not using Kagi SmallWeb, you’re missing the best of the internet. While two-thirds of posts are currently, “I accidentally wiped my Keychain, deleted my backups, and posted my ‘weird porn’ folder to Instagram with OpenClaw, and you can too!” inbetween are the sort of thoughtful, obsessive, or just plain charming human blogs that … Continue reading "11 SmallWeb Finds"
Jafar is objectively the best Disney villain, because he's the only one to sing a mocking reprise of the hero's theme song directly to his face while end-of-act-II-ing him. In the Danish dub, Broadway actor Jonathan Freeman is replaced by Nis Bank-Mikkelsen, who weirdly played Aladdin in the 1975-6 shoestring-budget Danish tv miniseries.* Prince AliYes, … Continue reading "”Prins Ali (Reprise)”…
(My kink is retranslating the Danish versions of Disney songs.) The glittering snow decks the mountain at nightNo footprints show the wayAn entirely isolated realm and its queen. That’s me. And the wind’s cry reflects the storm withinI have lost everything to a terrible magicShut no one in. Let no one see.Hold the facade that … Continue reading "“Let It Happen” from Frost"
Ernie Smith over at Tedium somehow makes the most cogent argument yet for blogging in the 2020s, and he does it with pancakes. When viewed as contagion not content, one quickly grows as sick of hot takes as Kiki of pancakes. Quick, cheap and messy isn’t the highest expression of humanity, but it seems all … Continue reading "Cold Takes & Pancakes"