Month: March 2010

…NOT SUCH A GOOD IDEA, WAS IT?

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This post outlines numerous ‘THINGS PEOPLE SHOULDN’T MAKE ANIMALS DO’.


Has no-one told this dick that it’s DOLPHINS you shouldn’t train to jump through hoops?
I can’t see this ending well…

Here’s a link to a UK story, something else you shouldn’t ever train animals to do…

WHEN TAEKWONDO MONKEYS ATTACK!

I’m against using trained animals for anything remotely funny or entertaining. I fully accept the need for assistance animals, like guide dogs and such, and I can understand the training of family pets, as interaction and attention is exactly what the animals need.
But when I see stuff like dancing bears or animals in circus acts, trained to jump through hoops or some such silly thing, it really gets my goat.

The above image has absolutely NOTHING to do with the story, as it’s obviously a shopped image, but it’s so frickin’ awesome, I just had to include it… …ChainSawBear..Oh Yeah!

Why the desire to not only eradicate nearly to the point of extinction majestic animals like lions and tigers and bears (oh my), but to humiliate them by reducing them to the state of performing stupid tricks for an only slightly more intelligent audience?

We should be trying to repopulate these species in what is left of their natural environment, not training them to keep the kiddies entertained one Saturday afternoon…
But, I guess that’s just basic human nature…

Sometimes, we live to regret our choices…

Sometimes we only barely live…

But more often than not, it’s the animal that suffers…

Let’s face it, humans have been using animals for whatever takes their fancy for longer than recorded history. Animals in wars, animals in entertainment…it’s been going on for a long time. For some reason, just because we perceive ourselves as having a higher intelligence and more awareness of self, we can then justify our utilisation of the ‘lower life forms’ for whatever purpose we see fit.

We seem to think that they have less right to exist than we do. They serve as our test subjects, our circus acts, our bomb detectors, our porn stars (ICK!) and numerous other degrading and dangerous things. Maybe it is time to take a good long look at how we treat other life forms on this planet.

OH SHIT…wrong picture!
Sorry, that one’s just on there for a friend…yeah, a friend…

Here you go, this is what I meant to post…

I would say that we should treat them more like we treat ourselves, but then I read back over what I’ve said and realise that we do! We treat them the same way we treat other people. Maybe we should raise the bar on how we treat everyone and everything else, maybe raise it to the same level we would like to be treated ourselves….
Maybe it’s all too much trouble….

But try to remember…sooner or later…

KARMA BITES…

Zombie Epic (and it once won me a free book)

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When Wandaful went out to play,
The living dead were roaming ’round.
She’d picked a very dangerous day,
With corpses bursting from the ground.

She ran in fear of being shredded,
Torn to bits, eviscerated.
Throat torn out, then beheaded,
Being killed was over–rated!

She found a hide, she caught her breath.
She hoped they wouldn’t find her there.
But stopping still would be her death,
A zombie grabbed her by the hair……

When last we saw our title chick,
The excrement had hit the fan.
The zombie hadn’t missed a trick,
The end of Wanda’s cunning plan.

The lunging teeth, the blood-filled eyes
Fingers tangled in her hair.
So sure she was of her demise,
Her strength gave out, she didn’t care.

The zombie lunged to bite her head
Then suddenly it fell away.
No longer un-, just merely dead.
What twist of fate had saved the day…..?

When last we met, our girl survived
The revenants, up from the grave.
The zombies who did putrefy,
They lurch along, warm flesh they crave.

Then looking down she gave a start,
A friend she saw, a face she knew.
Tasmaniac, who’d passed away
From ruptured gut and loss of spew.

The bullet wound that saved her ass,
The one that gave the final death,
To Zombie Steve who still had class,
(and a shocking case of cannibal breath)

Was fired from up the grassy knoll,
by some sort of mystery person.
Surprised to see, while on a stroll,
A dead man attacking Elle McPherson

That fateful day, that dreadful rising,
When the dead crawled from the ground,
That millions died is not surprising,
Blood and entrails scattered round.

We nearly lost the one we love,
And lost another on the way
Poor Tassie needs a body glove
The man’s a mess, I hear you say.

But Wanda’s safe, and now you see,
She didn’t die so please don’t sook.
If more you want, don’t look at me
Just ask the Keene to write the book!!!

Teaser from my current WIP…

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It seemed appropriate for where my life was at the moment. The floor was wet with God-knows-what, and the place stank like a cesspool. Scrawled graffiti reminiscent of hieroglyphics from some long-forgotten empire lined the dirty, peeling walls, while webs spun by spiders long-dead hung thick in the corners. Cigarette butts, fit wrappers, plastic spoons and syringes littered the rough concrete floor, punctuated now and then by a used condom or a crushed cigarette packet. A pair of legs stuck out from one of the cubicles, feet splayed apart as though in death and one jeans leg soaking up some unidentified puddle from the floor, the denim already wet halfway to the knee. Their owner wasn’t deceased, though, just asleep: the deep, dark sleep that heroin gives you. I had checked when I came in; we didn’t want to be involved in anything official if someone else happened to enter the public toilet and found us shooting up next to a corpse.
I looked over at Carolyn, stoned out of her mind, and wondered just where we were going. Life was shit, and not getting any better. We were both addicts and both unemployed: even though I was a trained nurse, I hadn’t worked in years, too busy looking for easy money and the next score. Here we were, off our trees again on heroin, sitting near the vomit of the dealer we had scored off. He had swallowed his gear, which was sealed in water balloons for just that situation, when an undercover cop grabbed him off the Richmond street. After being released from the police station without charge due to lack of evidence, he had gone straight to the public toilets around the corner from the cop-shop – which is where I saw him – and drank a heap of water laced with salt from his backpack. The name he used with customers was Johnny. I recognised him from other times I had scored here, and knew that he usually had good stuff and that his sizes were better than normal for street gear. Just as I walked into the toilet block, he threw up everywhere, the bright colours of the balloons blatant in amongst the pale red soft-drink that made up the bulk of the vomit. I had bought two bile covered balloons from him for our last seventy dollars and, as he left to do more risky business, called Carolyn in for our hit of smack. At the time, I thought I was doing the right thing, but now I see the strange logic of giving poison to the one I loved. Smack was our way of life at that time. We lived to score, and scored to live. As I packed up our hit-kit, capping the syringes after rinsing them out, I wondered why other junkies felt the need to leave their used works lying around uncapped for someone to stick themselves with. It only took a second to pick everything up, and junkies lived with enough guilt as it was without adding more to the load.
I felt all warm and fuzzy, relaxed for the first time that day. I had maybe an hour to enjoy it before I had to start thinking about getting some cash for the next score. Heroin normally lasts about eight to twelve hours before the effects wear off, but if you are running a habit, you need a fresh taste every six hours or so to fend off the withdrawals. You can never judge just how long it will take to get the cash for the next hit, so it pays to start thinking about it as soon as possible. I had a pretty good system going. I would steal books from the bigger department stores and sell them to second-hand bookshops – mostly the same ones – in the Eastern suburbs, where the owners asked no questions and were always willing to take as many as I could get. In two hours I could steal enough to get a couple of hundred dollars, enough for a half gram of gear, the bare minimum needed to get us off once again, although a couple of caps would settle the withdrawals for a while. For now, I would relax and enjoy the stone. We were in the women’s toilet block as there were more stalls to hit up in. We’d tried to go to the disabled toilet, with its own tap and more privacy, but some other junkie must have beaten us there. They were everywhere these days. Heroin use in Melbourne had spiralled to previously unknown numbers throughout the nineties.

B.R.I.T. Bendigo Retarded Institute of ‘Tardation

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Bendigo Regional Institute of TAFE (Technical and Further Education, for all you non-Aussies). Supposedly a bastion of learning, but in reality another bureaucracy that fails its students dismally.
I enrolled there in 2008 for a two year course in the Social Services field.
STUPID ME, for believing it would only last two years and then I would have another qualification. It’s been two years now, going into the third, and so far, due to the crap bureaucrats there, I have finished maybe half of my course. The first year was fine, did close to eighteen subjects, but the second year they fucked up royally and only offered ONE subject the whole year. This year, still no word on anything (and it’s already nearly April). Originally I was informed that we would begin classes on April 12th, but it’s now March 24th, only a few days away from the Easter Break, and STILL NO TIMETABLE OR EVEN ANY ENROLMENT OR SUBJECT INFORMATION!
FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If I had known, I would have enrolled in Cert IV in Writing and Editing, not sat around like a fucking legless ass, waiting to be told what we are doing this year….
I try to call the coordinator, and get told either that ‘she is on another call, can she call you back’ (and no recall so far) or she doesn’t answer her phone at all. I leave messages on her voice-mail, and guess what?
NO FUCKING REPLY!!!!!!!!!

So FUCK YOU, BRIT….and the horse you rode in on!

No wonder people lose it and go something-something……
That’s right…that’s the phrase I’m looking for…..
GO FUCKING CRAZY!!!!!!!!

REVIEW: Horns by Joe Hill(strom King)

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I finished Horns by Joe Hill the other day. Fantastic magical-realism novel masquerading as a horror. Don’t get me wrong…it’s still a horror novel as well…there’s plenty of blood and guts for all you gore-hounds (which I don’t mind at all if done properly and used to further the plot or the atmosphere, and Hill uses it very well). I read in another review somewhere that Hill has his father’s talent without the need to be so wordy (or something to that effect), and I’d have to agree. Heart-Shaped Box was a brilliant debut novel, powerful and poised, and his short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts showed us that his talent lies in many genres, not just darkness. Other shorts and a novelette released mostly through PS publishing in the U.K. also highlight that Hill isn’t a one-hit wonder…he’s got the stamina and the talent to go the whole way. I’ll be following this author very closely indeed, and I’d personally rate him somewhere close to Dallas Mayr (aka Jack Ketchum) for the ability to engage the reader in his own private Hell. Now to hope that Hill can produce the volume of work that his father (Stephen King) and Mayr have done.
Horns centres on Ignatius ‘Iggy’ Perrish, the lack-talent second son of a well-known jazz musician. Iggy’s brother Terry has inherited his father’s talent while Iggy seems content to put his all into his relationship with Merrin, his first and bestest girl. But when Merrin is raped and killed, the whole town assumes Iggy is the culprit. Lack of evidence fails to convict him, but at the same time it also fails to exonerate him in the eyes of his friends and neighbours. Iggy fumbles through a year of mourning, and then, on the morning after the first anniversary of the heinous act, Iggy wakes up from an alcohol-fuelled night of ‘doing terrible things’ with some body modifications…a pair of horns growing from his forehead. And as if that’s not enough, the horns also come with the ability to draw forth all the darkest secrets and desires from anyone who sees them. At first he is stunned with disbelief and the thought that he has finally gone insane, but eventually Iggy decides to use these powers to track down and punish those responsible for Merrin’s death. What he doesn’t realise is that in life, the devil’s in the details…and this devil wants to come out and play.
Brilliant, moody novel. Hill ramps the pace at the start, and then drops back into the past for a coming-of-age tale of when Iggy and Merrin first met. Some people have said that this detracts from the novel, but I loved the poignant and captivating back-story that developed through the middle of the novel. It then ramps up the pace and the tension again as events culminate in a not unexpected finale…but there is one small catch. Not that I’m gonna tell you what it is…read the damn book!
With this very powerful and compelling novel Hill has proven once again that he is a consummate storyteller.
It’s in the genes.
8/10

REVIEW: A Million Versions of Right by Matthew Revert

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I’ll just say that this book is deserving of any and all praise heaped upon it’s pristine creme UK paper…

And here is the opinion I put forward on Goodreads and Facebook….

‘If words were weapons, Revert is writing with smart bomb bunker-busters. If I were Osama Bin Laden, I would declare a JIHAD on anyone who doesn’t, while perusing the pernicious, depraved tales penned by Revert, get dragged kicking and screaming into an alternate reality where headphones touch themselves at night (and any other time it pleases them…), where omelettes contain dreadlocks, and where wank fairies expel miasmic gasses 24/7.
Revert has, in this cuckoo collection, far transcended the limits of the imagination, and he has done it with a wonderful sense of style and grace. Not only are the ramblings within this volume exceedingly bizarre and ‘What the FUCK was he thinking???’, but the style and natural ability Revert exhibits shines out in every sentence, every paragraph.
This raw ability to bludgeon the reader with prose worthy of review by the likes of Burroughs and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is what will win the reader over within pages of starting this wonderful, wonderful volume.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!!!
FREE story from the collection available HERE!
Buy it HERE!