Tom Hanks Hate Crime

cw: suicide, tasteless behavior, on my part as much as anybody else’s

I kid, that title “Tom Hanks Hate Crime” is sensationalized.  I read a snippet about the steam tunnel kid whose disappearance inspired Mazes & Monsters and the D&D panic in general, and it mentioned that books about the subject came out before the guy was found alive.  So I was picturing this comic scenario where a guy disappears from his college and assumes an identity to get away from it all, then sees Tom Hanks playing him at a local movie theater.  It is to lol.

Unfortunately, the movie came out (on TV, not theaters) a year after he died.  The young fella in question was maybe gay and very troubled.  A failed suicide attempt precipitated his disappearance, a successful one ended his suffering in the sad way.  So basically, Hanks was playing a fictionalized version of a real LGBT youth that committed suicide, tha homophobic bastid.  Again, jk, Philadelphia etc etc.  But it’s more ghoulish than funny, looking at the facts.

The bastid.

–vhs cover for Rona Jaffe's Mazes & Monsters

Imagination Machine Broke

Had a dream that was a mashup of Logan, No Country for Old Men, and Of Mice and Men.  Whatever wasn’t from one of those wasn’t exactly original either.  Younger Josh Brolin and a younger kid were escaped from a home for maladjusted youth where some murders happened.  Who did that?  Seems it was the younger kid and he snapped because he was being molested.  Kid Brolin snaps and ends up killing that kid, but then becomes a serial killer himself, somehow also friends with old version of Professor X from Logan, and using his powers to get away with stuff.  Like, Prof X has the powers but little sense of himself, and Killer Kid Brolin has the force of personality to lean on him, make him do what he wants.  And of course, who /where was I, in all of this?  Living on passive media got a lot of us dreams where we are nobody and nothing, just taking in a universe like watching a tv show.  It’s one of those deals.

The Individual and Society and Kung Fu

revengering

There’s this horrible kung fu movie I keep coming back to, in English called “The Revenger,” starring the lovely Ti Lung.  There are two things that compel me to watch it again.  First and foremost, the voice actor for the lead in the English dub is spectacularly degenerate.  I love him.  I don’t know if I’d even say he’s a bad actor; he can put the emotion on that he’s supposed to be conveying, sometimes even a subtle attitude of sass or menace.  But he sounds like his cheeks are full of cottonballs, and anything that has to be shouted comes out completely bizarre.  My fave line to say in his voice, “I’ve come for my father’s bones!”  Love that shit.  (Spoiler alert?  None of you are going to watch this, or if you start, you won’t make it to the end.)

starring the revengerSecond, it’s a Chinese perspective on individualism vs. collectivism, personal principles vs. social harmony.  I am missing a lot of context, possibly all of the context, but if I can ever tumble to it, maybe the movie will help me understand how at least some Chinese people really feel about all that Confucius shit.  Here’s what I do get…

There were some competing philosophies of how to have the best society, early in Chinese history.  The idea that won out, to the extent it informs people even in other countries of the “Sinosphere,” was Confucianism.  The principles are pretty similar to the Old Testament, particulars about food and slaughter aside.  Obey the government, obey your family, everybody be righteous at all times or get squashed.  If you love Confucius and think I’m getting something wrong, feel free to take a dump in my comments.  I might even allow it out of moderation.

Side note: Western techno-fascist shitbird wannabe cult leader “Mencius Moldbug” named himself after a huge Confucius fanboy that helped his teachings proliferate, kind of the Plato to his Socrates, though I think the relationship was less direct.

Collectivism is a general way of doing things, common in many countries outside the West (especially in Asia, I don’t know about Africa or indigenous America), that prioritizes societal needs over the individual.  The only go-to version from Western culture I can think of is that Vulcan saying from Star Trek, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the individual or the few.”  It’s telling in Star Trek that philosophy was always being tested and contested when it came up, because…

Individualism is the general way of doing things in the West, especially America since Ronald Reagan, which prioritizes the needs of the individual over those of society.  Within my American heart, this definitely has an edge, though they both exist in a balance.  I love this interview with Einsturzende Neubaten’s Blixa Bargeld where he says, “I was only trying to establish myself and my individualism as anarchically and radically as possible.”  That’s gonna be my excuse for everything for the rest of my life.

memevengeAs much as I’d love to be a radical, almost everything in life seems to have a moderate answer, a question, a caveat, some reason you can’t reasonably be absolute about it.  The well-being of society is crucial to our collective survival.  The well-being of an individual is paramount because we are all alone within ourselves, never having been given a choice about whether or not to exist, and we should be able to live our lives in our own way, as long as it causes no harm to others.

And within SJW circles we are approaching that from a Western perspective regardless of how much we want to “decolonize our minds.”  Self-care babe.  Disability activism is a huge component of progressive discourse, but a seldom discussed aspect of that is conflicting access.  What works for one disabled person may be poison to another, perfect access for everybody at all times is impossible, though it is a reasonable thing to aspire to.  Within that issue of conflicting access, we see this: who’s individual needs are more important?  When is it reasonable to consider the needs of the majority?  What if (this will be utterly foolish, bear with me) the trolley being made accessible to this one disabled guy causes five non-disabled guys to be 25% more likely to get hit by a trolley?

So this has become a recurring theme of art, to the point that it’s a running joke every artist statement claims their piece is about “The Individual vs. Society.”  And “The Revenger,” at least in the first half, is about exactly that.  Ti Lung’s character is a buff kung fu master who lives by his own rules.  When he encounters a religious charlatan taking people’s money to lead them in a hokey ritual, he busts up the joint.  With kung fu.  (This moment early in the film will make all movement skeptics instantly orgasm.)  When he meets young lovers fleeing the gal’s arranged marriage, he busts up the coercive groom.  With kung fu.

naughty revenger, no!Living in this way he makes a lot of enemies.  Those enemies are leaders of men – clans, businesses, religious groups, etc. – and while plotting to get back at him, they make the reasonable argument this is for social order, for harmony in society.  Whether they seem righteous or not, you can’t just have roughnecks busting up the joint.  With kung fu.

Their scheme somehow involved one of their daughters* getting pregnant by the individualist (I don’t remember why), and him getting ambushed and killed with dynamite.  They try to kill the daughter* and her baby, but they get away, and baby grows up to be played by same actor as the dad.  Only now, Ti Lung is a The Revenger.  Meanwhile, the Bad Dudes for Society have parceled up dad’s bones for keepsakes.  When baby Revenger grows up, mom tells him what happened, but makes him swear not to revenge.

He agrees, but he goes out to collect dad’s bones.  While he’s at it, he scares the guys, even wearing a fake moustache to act like dad’s ghost for a minute.  The bad dudes attack him and then it isn’t revenge; it’s self-defense.  Promise to mom kept.

This is Chinese media that shows collective concerns can go too far in oppressing the individual.  BUT it came out of Hong Kong when they were an independent hyper-capitalist colony of Britain.  BUT Cantonese people are still Chinese, still under the sway of confucian ideals.  And other of their movies seem to support those values.  BUT does this movie even directly affront them?  Dude is awfully upset about a dad he never knew, carries out his mission in obedience to that ghost.  Confucian filial piety, right?

I don’t know.  But I do love the first part, where dad version Ti Lung is establishing himself and his individualism as radically and anarchically as possible.  Excelsior!

it's him. the revenger.

 

*I made a mistake here.  I wrote the post before I rewatched the movie and was mostly going from memory.  The character that got pregnant with baby Revenger was the main villain’s sister, not daughter.  I left out a lot of deets that weren’t super relevant to the thesis.  This junk has side characters and side plots galore.

Wrestling is the New Burlesque

You remember burlesque?  That was a thing a few years back, where the sex nerds would put on pasties and pretend to be vaudeville or something, didn’t happen to go to any myself.  I feel like there was a little stand-up clown sign outside the clubs which said “you need this many sex partners to enter.”  Which is great, you know, sex nerds deserve their diversions.  But it petered out.

Suddenly, I’m seeing all these poly and queer youths doing amateur wrestling.  What is that?  It’s certainly worse for your health than glitter lung.  Hell, some of them use glitter and still get the glitter lung as well.  But yeah, seems like wrestling is the new performance art for sex nerds.  The more you know.  And no kinkshaming in this, I just think, maybe don’t break your spines.  You only get one on this bitch of earth.

Thanks for listening.

–

Spooktober 2022, Day Thirty-Three?

Content Warning:  This could’ve, perhaps should’ve, gone atop every Spooktober entry.  Many horror genres are ableist at their core, some ageist or sexist, etc.  I’ll be less scrupulous about ableist language in this post than my blog’s usual rules.

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group argues over.  This should be last post on the topic this year.  The voting left a trail of bodies in its wake – prompts that did not win.  Ranked by the number of votes they received, with the most popular first, they were:  Psycho-Biddy, Devils & Demons, Ghosts, Killer Toys, Wintery / Snow, Home Invasion, Mad Scientist, Possession, Backwoods, Folklore, Mutants, Giant Monster, Noir, Psychological, Splatterpunk, Alien / Space, Dark Web / Technology, Killer Animal, Body Horror, Body Snatchers, Creepy Kid, Creepypasta / Urban Legend, Mummy, Psychic, Stephen King, The Swarm, Teen, Comedy Horror, Holiday, Kiddie Horror, J-Horror / Asian Horror, and Anime.  As I use the prompts below, you’ll see the name of it appear in parentheses.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #33? — Bonus Spooksfake VHS cover for "Weird Blade"

TITLE:  Weird Blade (ウイーアド ブレード)

PREMISE:  A three-part anime (Anime) OVA called “Weird Blade,” inspired by the structure of Cyber City Oedo 808, which had three main boys, and each had their own special episode.  The setting is a futuristic Japan (J-Horror) in a smaller city near a spooky forest.

Episode One:  Sukeko the Lady.  Sukeko is a purple-haired trans gal, hacker, and party girl.  (She’s the one in the pic with the high pony tail.)  In a club scene we meet her friends Chisaku and Kurochimaru.  Chisaku sleazes on her and every other lady in anime rake fashion, Kurochimaru just likes to play with his yo-yo and dance.

But that life is just her time outside the house.  At home she has to take care of a mean old grandma (Psycho-Biddy), and stay closeted to her.  She has a sense of obligation based on some childhood experiences, being cared for by the crone before she turned mean.  Little does she know Grandma is a mad scientist (Mad Scientist), a hacker in her own right, who has married the world-wide web to the underworld of ghosts (Ghosts) and devils (Devils & Demons).  Every time Sukeko leaves the house, Grandma slips on the VR goggles and gloves, and cyber-stalks her wayward grandchild.

Snow begins to fall on the city.  Grandma and Sukeko have a very tense conversation over food, like, “you’re poisoning me!” “you’re nuts, eat your porridge,” that kind of thing.

Grandma calls her Sukeko instead of the deadname, and Sukeko realizes she knows.  The conversation shifts to that, with Sukeko cautiously optimistic this will be a “I know you’re queer and accept you” situation.  It is not, and they stomp out of each other’s presence.  Grandma jacks in and runs “possess.dmn” file to hAx0r Sukeko’s brain (Possession).

Sukeko has to abandon her own VR rig and flee the house in a panic.  She runs up a snowy trail (Wintery / Snow) into the woods.  Close to dying of cold, she finds a cabin in the woods (Backwoods).

The cabin-dwellers are nice, but Grandma hacks their brains and makes them try to kill Sukeko.  She holes up in the computer core of the cabin, with the possessed trying to beat down the door.  In a cold-blooded and frosty state of mind, Sukeko jacks into the computer core, assuming the avatar of a yuki-onna (Folklore).  She sneaks past grandma’s home defense, riding the hack signal back to her house.

There she remote controls grandma’s doll collection to become murderous (Killer Toys) home invaders (Home Invasion).  Grandma tries to run and hide, but ultimately she gets got.

The yuki-onna melts into Sukeko and she has a little cry as a virtual projection into the crime scene.  But she has a weird vision – the doll that killed Grandma is a one-eyed girl from the club scene, Noriko, and she’s holding a weird blade.  The club girl flies away, leaving just the doll with the letter opener.

Episode Two:  Chisaku the Bullet.  Chisaku is an aqua-haired hard-boiled PI and typical anime perv.  He narrates his part of the story (Noir).  A sexy lady comes into his office and gives him a case.  Her dad, mom, and uncle were all killed by animals, but how?  Doesn’t make sense to her, though the police closed the case.

He investigates the scene of the crime – the cabin where Sukeko had fled.  Did she do the murder?  The audience has to wonder.  Chisaku finds a clue she was there and he calls her up.  She says to meet her on the Dark Web (Dark Web / Technology).  On his way out of the cabin, he is set upon by feral dogs (Killer Animal) that almost kill him, but he shoots ’em all.  He is a The Bullet.

At the cyber-den of a trusted ally, suspecting both his home and his office won’t be safe, he jacks in to do the meetup.  Sukeko is in yuki-onna mode in a virtual cafe, says she didn’t do that murder, leaving open the possibility she did others.  Chisaku doesn’t press the matter, but he begins to suspect this isn’t Sukeko.  “Are you really Sukeko?” “Are you really Chisaku?”

Oh shit, he thinks.  She hit him with an existential crisis virus, that makes you not know what’s real (Psychological).  “Nice try toots, but I don’t know what’s real on the best of days.”  He jacks off.  I mean out.  I mean logs off.  It was bravado, but there was some truth to it.  He knows the only way to fight the doubt is to take everything he sees at face value, and has the presence of mind to give that a go – at least until he can get the virus cleared.

The world is weird.  His friend is mutated into a techno-organic mess with his own computer core.  Outside he sees the dogs from before have come back from the dead as mutants (Mutants), and tracked him to the cyber-den.  He shoots them again, and hustles through the streets.  Since his friend can’t clear the EC virus, maybe actual Sukeko can.

The dogs come back again, mutated into a giant monster (Giant Monster), assisted by passers-by on the street, who seem to have become part of the menacing force that is loose in the world (Body Snatchers).  Old shop ladies twist their heads around and trip him as he runs, that kind of stuff.  At Sukeko’s house the gate is locked but he gets over the wall, leaving the snatched bodies outside.  But the giant dog-thing gets over the fence and he has to kill it with every gardening implement he can find (Splatterpunk).  Where the blood and gore splashed on his arm, he starts to mutate, the flesh merging with his gun so he can’t put it down (Body Horror).

Inside he finds Sukeko looking like a cosmic horror, but talking very calmly, trying to pretend everything is normal.  “Grandmother is upstairs, she is not feeling well.  You shouldn’t be here, Chisaku.”  He explains he got the virus and she helps hack it out of him, and the world goes back to normal.

They stand in the doorway looking at the lawn.  Was there a murdered dog, or worse, a murdered person?  Noriko is in an action hero crouch over a pile of dead dogs, a weird blade in her hand.  She does back flips high into the air, disappearing into a flying saucer that zips away (Alien / Space).

Episode Three:  Kurochimaru the Blade.  Kurochimaru is a dark-green-haired martial artist and dropout.  At the club, the girls all want to get with him because of his physique and his fun-loving nature, but none of them make the cut.  Noriko tries to make a pass at him and whiffs.  But before he leaves, she gets his attention with something.

“I found something I think you should have.  It’s the ghost of a ninja’s sword.  I’m a humble space alien, it should be in the hands of a real Japanese martial artist.”  He takes the weird blade, like, “Uh… thanks?,” and jets.

His home is on the waterfront, a community straight out of Stephen King, where folksy accent-having salt-of-the-earth types rub shoulders with generically named middle class people, and everyone has dark secrets or weird gross sex stuff they do behind closed doors probably (Stephen King).

The blade feels weird in his hand and he takes it to an antiquarian’s shop.  The weirdo there is a secret mummy (Mummy) who monsters out and tries to get him into suspension bondage, and he cuts the bandages to escape.  This is played for laughs, as is the whole of this episode.  When something horror happens, it’s mixed with pratfalls to keep the spirit light (Comedy).

Out on the street, he’s like, “Now how will I find out what’s up with the weird blade?,” then sees a sign outside the high school that says “occult club meeting tonite” (Teen).  He goes inside.  A spooky janitor points him to the art room where the weirdos meet.  The Occult Club kids are annoyed that he busts up the seance.  They have stereotypical high school interactions with each other about it.  Probably a secret hot girl is wearing glasses that camouflage her hotness, I don’t know.

The scoobies decide to take him to the neighborhood psychic kid (Psychic, Creepy Kid).  Guy has the Shining, perhaps.  The kid looks like a miniature version of a character from Mob Psycho, and after Laurel & Hardy-ish shenanigans, gets his hand on the blade, to do a psychometry.

When he touches the sword, he activates its power, and starts chasing Kurochimaru and the kids around with the sword and an army of bugs and frogs and such (The Swarm).  The teens are all killed in Goosebumps-esque ways (Kiddie Horror), until just the hot girl and Kurochimaru remain.  Then the kid appears, fully transformed into a Jeff-the-Killer-esque edgelord form, blood coming out of his eyes (Creepypasta / Urban Legend).

They get to a mall which is doing the Japanese version of crimbo festivities (Holiday).  Sukeko and Chisaku are there on a date, wearing santa hats, but looking haunted by previous events.  The mall is attacked by the swarm and the creepy kid, turning into a violent free-for-all.  Chisaku spots Noriko dressed like a sexy elf, and Sukeko uses hacker powers to run “exorcism.exe” on the weird blade.

With the magic of the ghost sword dispelled, the alien loses interest in the world and leaves again in her UFO.  The three heroes walk through the devastation in shock.  Kurochimaru starts playing with his yo-yo again.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The horror of shoehorning as many concepts as possible into as small a space as possible.  Wasn’t easy!

Posters by AI, modified with photoshop.  Here’s the unmodified BS I wrangled into the poster, tho I’m not including all the sources for elements I cobbled in.

some AI bullshit

Get Me on a Cross

Seems like everyone I know in my personal life is more mentally ill than I am, to the point one is checking into a happy hotel semi-voluntary style for it.  When I feel like the “lone sane person in a world gone mad” it’s more a feeling of sadness for all the suffering around me.  So I was thinking, y’know, human sacrifice.  If I’m the sanest person in the world, they should be able to crucify me and have my blood wash away the emotional disorders of man.  Where the centurions at, I’m feelin’ generous.

–

Spooktober 2022, Days Thirty, Thirty-One, and Thirty-Two?

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group argues over.  Not quite my last entry on the topic for this year, but this is the last of the official prompts.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #30 — Historical

TITLE:  Drifting Bar Mitzvah

PREMISE:  In 1993 it happened.  Young Saul’s Bar Mitvah disappeared from this reality.  Was it related to his uncle Ira’s experiments with physics?  Probably.  The old lady who rented the brownstone afterward would occasionally find her VHS copies of Falcon Crest partially over-taped with images of an especially lost tribe of Israelites.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Saul’s family and friends are on some Lost in Space shit, but will they ever shift home? What if they shift into a toxic environment or the vacuum of space?

Posters by AI, modified with photoshop.

fake movie poster for "Drifting Bar MItzvah"

 

SPOOKTOBER DAY #31 — Small Creatures

TITLE:  Cathemeral

PREMISE:  OK, I know cats are not cathemeral, they’re crepuscular, but cathemeral has cat in the name.  It means something like “active or dormant at any time of day or night.”  Veronica’s sleep cycle is thrown to hell for unknown reasons, and she starts to hallucinate little movements out of the corner of her eyes.  Those ultimately turn into little cat-like abominations.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Unreality.  Maybe the cats do messed up shit and she’s blamed for it.

fake book cover for "Cathemeral"

 

SPOOKTOBER DAY #32? — Admin Choice, Retro Slasher & Giallo

TITLE:  The Prom Theme is Red

PREMISE:  Kids have a prom.  There’s a weird girl that managed to join the prom committee despite zero popularity.  Nobody likes her ideas and they ignore her.  But she won’t let them get away with it!

HORROR ELEMENT:  Blood, guts, a real horrorshow.

fake movie poster for "The Prom Theme is Red"

 

Random Thunks

Happy Halloween ladies, and I mean that in the same way that Clancy Brown’s character in Highlander meant it, when he said it to those nuns.  It’s gonna be a busy one and I’ll probably turn in the last of my Spooktobers tomorrow, though they are in the works.  Tomorrow also the first day of NaNoWriMo, and I’m gonna be hella busy that day too.  In the meantime, allow me to share with you an example of my random thunks, from when I was on the john yesterday.

My cat came to meow for pets.  I called him “little duder” though he is little neuter.  As cat names spin out, I called him “Little Duderonomy,” a reference to “Old Deuteronomy” from Cats, which I’m only familiar with from videos mocking the film.  That got me thinking about Judi Dench playing Old Deut in the scary movie, and about the old testament book of Deuteronomy.

I don’t know from the bible, really.  I feel like Deuteronomy was a close neighbor of Leviticus, in the whole “this is still a religion of abject patriarchy and genocidal xenophobia” part of the works.  In that context, where “priestess” is a dirty word that will get you filleted like a salmon, Judi Dench as a cleric for cat religion becomes a bit amusing.

And that got me thinking about the differences between judaism and xtianity in how they approach their holy writ.  In studying demonology, I strayed into some rabbinical texts, and was struck by how much more scholarly they were than the xtian ones.  But that very density of thought, the layers and layers of analysis and (motivated) reasoning, was all in the service of adding mystique to harmful bullshit.  Bullshit that was, at its core, as simple as a total ass-pull.

As much as Agrippa would look like a basic bitch next to some of those rabbis, his system of categorizing and breaking down everything in the world into labels and spirits and numbers, it was just more appealing to me.  And that makes sense, because it was at least an indirect influence on Linnaeus, and subsequently all that ongoing work of piecing together the tree of life – the real tree of life, not the kabbalah – which is something I love to reflect on.

And that got me thinking about my own work in demonology, how I went searching for something like a canon of demons, found out it was a bullshitting free-for-all, and then hatched a foolish dream of bringing it altogether in a modern synthesis that irons out the contradictions.  If I did that, I would be putting reason and thought and structure onto a cartoonish mass of nonsense, which would make me better than those rabbis only in that I’m not also enforcing violent patriarchy.  I mean, that’s not nothing, but I wonder that I should be reiterating the errors of judaism and xtianity in my precious spare time.

That’s it, enjoy!

–

Spooktober 2022, Day Twenty-Nine

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group argues over.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #29 — Eco-Horror and Nature

TITLE:  Homo Sapiens Vs Hedgehogus Rex

PREMISE:  An aging showgirl is for some reason treated like the new hotness by everyone who knows her.  Ah, that’s why.  This is a straight to cable horror / skin flick from 1993, and she’s the “big name” in the cast.

Tiffany Exquisite is minding her own showgirl business when a sweaty patron with a crush gives her an exotic pet as a gift.  Incidentally, we have little idea what the animal actor was.  Not a hedgehog, perhaps an obscure species of tenrec?

She names him Hedgehogus Rex because he’s big and a little scary.  Somehow he reproduces by releasing quills like spores, each growing into a replica of himself, and the horde runs amok.

HORROR ELEMENT:  The folly of man, causing species to go invasive.  Leave those beasts alone.

Poster by AI, modified with photoshop.

fake movie poster for "Homo Sapiens Vs Hedgehogus Rex"

Spooktober 2022, Day Twenty-Eight

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group argues over.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #28 — Witches and Wizards

TITLE:  Doris on my Mind

PREMISE:  Imma keep it real with you chief, this was a random semi-stylish looking result out of a pile of trash old AI attempts, so I’m just using it because it is easier than fixing something else.  I have no idea.  Lessee…

Doris wanted Sandra to really get it, maaan.  She tried to teach her about what magic is – that transcendent feeling in psychedelic music, the way reality is an electric membrane and we’re all sexy lizards sliding across it in a cosmic dance.

Well, there’s always mind control.  Doris takes possession of the younger woman’s mind, prying it open like rose petals or some other kinda yonic imagery.  How can Sandra resist the occult and keep her very soule, when Doris is on her mind?

HORROR ELEMENT:  Loss of the self, mind bondage babey.

Poster by AI, modified with photoshop.

fake book cover for "Doris on my Mind"